Academic Performance and Childhood Misnourishment: A Quantile Approach

Consumer/Household Economics, Health Economics and Policy,

National School Lunch Program Menus: A Moral Hazard Problem

Decisions are made daily concerning many facets of the National School Lunch Program at the federal, state and local levels, but how are decisions made with regard to the actual choice of foods on school lunch menus? No study that we are aware of examines the incentives and barriers among the SFAs decision-making process with regard to the provision of healthier lunch menus. The issue faced by SFAs is a classic moral hazard problem: a SFA’s effort for the provision of healthy menu options is unknown (i.e., hidden actions). SFAs can accept federal funds and agricultural commodities to provide healthy lunches while districts create school wellness policies “requiring” minimum nutritional quality of school-provided foods, but the overall quality of implementation and compliance are not observable. This paper utilizes the Principal-Agent (PA) theory to model this moral hazard problem and unveil the barriers and incentive targets and channels behind the observed inefficient school nutrition policy implementation

Do School Nutrition Programs Influence Child Weight? A Treatment Effect Analysis

Schools have significant influence on children’s health making health interventions targeting schools more likely to succeed such as the School Breakfast Program (SBP) and National School Lunch Program (NSLP). A key question that this literature currently concentrates on is to what extent do SBP and/or NSLP directly contribute to the observed outcome of child weight? This study assesses the impact by analyzing multiple simultaneous treatments on weight as the child progresses from 1st to 8th grade while acknowledging self-selection into the programs. Specifically, we utilize Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATT) and Difference-in-Differences (DID) methodologies to address the issue. We find that participating in only NSLP decreases the probability of overweight; however, participating in both programs decreases the probability of healthy weight and increases the probability of overweight

Spillover Effects of SBP and NSLP on Academic Performance

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

Expert Panel on Technical Questions and Data Gaps for the ERS Loss-Adjusted Food Availability (LAFA) Data Series

The Economic Research Service’s (ERS’s) Loss-Adjusted Food Availability (LAFA) data series is derived from ERS’s Food Availability (FA) data by adjusting for food spoilage, plate waste, and other losses to more closely approximate actual intake. ERS refers to the LAFA data series as preliminary and recognizes the need to systematically update and improve the loss assumptions underlying the LAFA per capita availability estimates. The goal of this project was to develop recommendations to improve the integrity, transparency, and validity of the LAFA data series and build on lessons learned from prior efforts. The overall objective was to research and recommend workable, concrete solutions to technical questions underlying the data and to close data gaps. In collaboration with RTI International, a team of four academic experts reviewed background materials, examined current data, searched for and analyzed alternative data sources, and developed recommendations for the set of technical questions and data gaps provided by ERS. We prioritized the recommendations based on our assessment of ease of implementation and effect on improving the LAFA data series. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Economic Research Service or USDA

Understanding IRI Household-Based and Store-Based Scanner Data

Commercial scanner data on retail food purchases are an integral resource for a broad range of food policy research. ERS has acquired proprietary household and retail scanner data from IRI, a market research firm, including novel data on nutrition information and health and wellness claims for a large number of products. This report provides a detailed description of the methodology, characteristics, and statistical properties of these datasets and summarizes the limitations and considerations for using these data for food economics research. The report shows that the IRI data are an extensive, complex data source and provides an introduction to the data for new users and important considerations for advanced users