Large-scale school meal programs and student health: Evidence from rural China

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dc.creatorWang, Jingxi
dc.creatorHernandez, Manuel A.
dc.creatorDeng, Guoying
dc.date2021-03-01
dc.date2024-05-22T12:13:58Z
dc.date2024-05-22T12:13:58Z
dc.date.accessioned2026-06-27T15:26:21Z
dc.descriptionReducing urban-rural gaps in child health and nutrition is one of the most difficult challenges faced by many countries. This paper evaluates the impact of the Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP), a large-scale school meal program in rural China, on the health and nutritional status of compulsory education students aged 6-16. We use data from multiple rounds of the China Health and Nutrition Survey between 2004-2015 and implement a quasi-experimental approach exploiting cross-county variations in program implementation. We find that NIP participation is, on average, associated with a higher height-for-age z-score in the order of 0.22-0.42 standard deviations. The impacts are larger among students in a better health condition but small or not significant among the most disadvantaged. We do not observe heterogeneous effects across several individual and household characteristics. We also do not find significant effects on Body Mass Index-for-age and weight-for-age z scores. The results suggest that NIP partially improved students’ health over the first years of implementation, but more support is needed to achieve broader impacts that effectively reach all vulnerable students. Several robustness checks support our findings.
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.identifierhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/143412
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/123456789/104403
dc.languageen
dc.publisherInternational Food Policy Research Institute
dc.relationhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/160752
dc.relationhttps://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.133550
dc.relationhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/147004
dc.relationhttps://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.133777
dc.rightsOpen Access
dc.sourceWang, Jingxi; Hernandez, Manuel A.; and Deng, Guoying. 2021. Large-scale school meal programs and student health: Evidence from rural China. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2009. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134319.
dc.subjectchild nutrition
dc.subjecthealth
dc.subjectschool feeding
dc.subjectnutrition
dc.subjectchildren
dc.subjectrural areas
dc.subjectproject evaluation
dc.titleLarge-scale school meal programs and student health: Evidence from rural China
dc.typeWorking Paper

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Instituto Internacional de Investigación sobre Políticas Alimentarias (IFPRI)