Spillover Effects of SBP and NSLP on Academic Performance

Abstract

The School Breakfast Program (SBP) and National School Lunch Program (NSLP) are two federally assisted school meal programs that currently serve over 31.7 million children each day. Most of the existing literature examines the nutritional quality of school meals with a handful studying the impacts on child weight. A couple of studies also examine whether SBP has impacts on academic performance, and, to our knowledge, no studies examine the direct or indirect effects of NSLP participation on performance. Using full-information maximum likelihood, we simultaneously estimate the child weight and academic performance production functions along with child choice equations and program participation equations to examine potential spillover effects of SBP and NSLP on academic performance through the mediator of child weight. Results do show spillover effects on 8th grade math and English scores with particularly large impacts on FRP eligible participants: negative impacts of NSLP participation and positive impacts of SBP participation on achievement.