 Long-term impacts of school nutrition: Evidence from China’s school meal reformGuanfu Fang and Ying Zhu World Development, 2022, vol. 153, issue C Abstract: Child malnutrition remains a major public health concern, especially in many developing countries. This paper examines the long-term effects of a school meal program on individuals’ cognitive and health outcomes in rural China. Exploiting the staggered implementation of the Student Nutrition Improvement Program (SNIP), we find that early exposure to the SNIP (ages 6–15) significantly improved children’s cognitive and health outcomes in the long run. These effects are not observed in urban residents who experienced similar socioeconomic changes in the same county. Empirical tests suggest that short-term improvements in children’s nutrient intakes and mothers’ labor market performance were likely to be potential mechanisms. Moreover, the effects of early exposure to the SNIP are stronger among children from low-socioeconomic status families. Our results suggest that the school nutrition program could be an important investment in children’s long-run human capital. This may be relevant for many developing countries today that attempt to provide or have provided subsidized school meals. Keywords: School meal; Cognitive ability; Health status; Mechanism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:153:y:2022:i:c:s0305750x22000444 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105854 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.