School nutritious feeding and cognitive abilities of students in poverty: Evidence from the nutrition improvement program in China

Chunkai Zhao, Boou Chen and Zhiyong Song

Children and Youth Services Review, 2024, vol. 159, issue C

Abstract: While considerable attention has been paid to the benefits of school nutritious feeding, little literature focused on the effect on human capital accumulation for students in poverty. By drawing on the quasi-natural experiment of the Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP) and adopting the Difference-in-Differences (DID) method, we sought to determine the causal relationship between school nutritious feeding and the cognitive ability (CA) development among poor students in China. Specifically, our estimates confirmed that NIP implementations significantly improved the CAs of students in poverty, which is supported by several robustness checks. Moreover, the potential mechanisms of this positive effect included improved health status, enhanced sense of belonging at school, and increased positive expectations for the future. Our study further enriches the literature on the positive effects of school nutritious feeding and provides insights for developing countries to customize nutritional poverty alleviation programs to promote human capital development.

Keywords: School nutritious feeding; Cognitive abilities (CAs); Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP); Human capital; Students in poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:159:y:2024:i:c:s0190740924000914

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2024.107519

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