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School feeding and learning achievement: Evidence from India's midday meal program

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  • Chakraborty, Tanika
  • Jayaraman, Rajshri
Abstract
We study the effect of the world's largest school feeding program on children's learning outcomes. Staggered implementation across different states of a 2001 Indian Supreme Court Directive mandating the introduction of free school lunches in public primary schools generates plausibly exogenous variation in program exposure across different birth cohorts. We exploit this to estimate the effect of program exposure on math and reading test scores of primary school-aged children. We find that prolonged exposure to midday meals has a robust positive effect on learning achievement. We further investigate various channels that may account for this improvement including complementary schooling inputs, heterogeneous responses by socio-economic status, and intra-household redistribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Chakraborty, Tanika & Jayaraman, Rajshri, 2019. "School feeding and learning achievement: Evidence from India's midday meal program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 249-265.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:139:y:2019:i:c:p:249-265
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2018.10.011
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    School feeding; Learning; Midday meal; Primary school education;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

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