Child welfare programs and child nutrition: Evidence from a mandated school meal program in India

Farzana Afridi

Journal of Development Economics, 2010, vol. 92, issue 2, 152-165

Abstract: Utilizing the data I collected on a nationally mandated school meal program in India, I examine the extent to which children benefit from the targeted public transfer. Relying upon built-in randomness in whether a child's 24-hour food consumption recall was for a school or non-school day, I find that the daily nutrient intake of program participants increased substantially by 49% to 100% of the transfers. The results are robust to the potential endogeneity of program placement and individual participation. The findings suggest that for as low a cost as 3Â cents per child per school day the scheme reduced the daily protein deficiency of a primary school student by 100%, the calorie deficiency by almost 30% and the daily iron deficiency by nearly 10%. At least in the short-run, therefore, the program had a substantial effect on reducing hunger at school and protein-energy malnutrition.

Keywords: School; meals; Nutrition; Intra-household; allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-3878(09)00016-9
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:92:y:2010:i:2:p:152-165

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().