Feeding for a brighter future: The long-term labor market consequences of school meals in rural China

Abstract

This study examines the impacts of childhood exposure to the Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP), which provides free school meals to eligible students in rural China, on adult labor market outcomes. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies, we employ a cohort difference-in-differences (DID) design to identify the NIP’s long-term effects. The results show that early-life exposure to the NIP has increased adulthood employment probability by 6.5 percentage points. Childhood exposure to the NIP has also resulted in an average increase of 12.4% in adult hourly wages and 10.3% in annual income. These findings remain robust to a battery of validity checks. Our heterogeneous analysis demonstrates that these effects are more pronounced among those who are females and from households with low socioeconomic status. Further, we find that exposure to the NIP yields lasting beneficial effects on adult education attainment, cognitive and non-cognitive skills, as well as health and health behaviors. This suggests that improvements in human capital accumulation and health behaviors are potential mechanisms contributing to the long-term labor market consequences of the NIP. Our study sheds light on the enduring impacts of school-based nutrition intervention on individuals’ economic well-being in developing countries.