Impact of the community eligibility provision program on school meal participation in Texas.

Abstract

To estimate the impact of opting into the community eligibility provision (CEP) on school meal participation among students in Texas. A quasi-experimental design using a two-way fixed effects panel difference-in-difference model and the variation in adoption timing to estimate the impact of opting into CEP on student breakfast and lunch participation in eligible, ever-adopting schools. All public and charter K-12 schools in Texas participating in national school meals (breakfast and/or lunch) from 2013 to 2019 who are eligible for the CEP program in at least 1 year and choose to opt into the program in at least 1 year (n 2797 unique schools and 16103 school-years). School-level administrative data from the Texas Department of Agriculture on meal counts, enrollment and summary characteristics of students merged with district-level educational and socio-demographic data from the Texas Education Authority. We find opting into CEP increased school breakfast participation by 4·59 percentage points (P < 0·001) and lunch participation by 4·32 percentage points (P < 0·001), on average. The effect is slightly larger (4·64 and 4·61, respectively) and still statistically significant when excluding summer months. Our findings suggest that opting into CEP modestly increases school meal participation in Texas, with a similar impact on breakfast and lunch.