IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/gdec09/15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The impact of school lunches on school enrolment: Evidence from an exogenous policy change in India

Author

Listed:
  • Jayaraman, Rajshri

Abstract

Education is thought to be central to economic development. Yet, relatively little is known about how developing countries might advance school participation. In November, 2001 the Indian Supreme Court issued a remarkable interim order directing errant Indian states to other children in government primary schools a warm school lunch. This paper uses this exogenous policy change to evaluate the impact of school lunches on early primary school enrolment. It finds that the introduction of a school lunch is associated with a 25 per cent increase in class 1 enrolment. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that school lunches bridge the overall gender or caste gaps in enrolment.

Suggested Citation

  • Jayaraman, Rajshri, 2009. "The impact of school lunches on school enrolment: Evidence from an exogenous policy change in India," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Frankfurt a.M. 2009 15, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:gdec09:15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/39926/1/15_jayaraman.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Drèze & Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, 2001. "School Participation in Rural India," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(1), pages 1-24, February.
    2. Dreze, Jean & Goyal, Aparajita, 2003. "Future of Mid-Day Meals," MPRA Paper 17386, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Drèze, Jean & Khera, Reetika, 2017. "Recent Social Security Initiatives in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 555-572.
    2. Chauhan, Apurv, 2015. "Plates for slates: The impact of a school feeding programme on community representations of schools," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 292-300.
    3. Janmejaya Samal & Ranjit Kumar Dehury, 2017. "Family Impact Analysis of Mid-day Meal (MDM) Scheme in India with Special Focus on Child Education and Nutrition," Journal of Development Policy and Practice, , vol. 2(2), pages 151-162, July.
    4. Lay, Jann, 2010. "MDG Achievements, Determinants, and Resource Needs: What Has Been Learnt?," GIGA Working Papers 137, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    5. Chaudhary, Latika, 2010. "Taxation and educational development: Evidence from British India," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 279-293, July.
    6. Manik Kumar & Nicky Naincy, 2020. "Revisiting the Gender Gap in Private Household Expenditure on Education in India: An Empirical Analysis," Paradigm, , vol. 24(2), pages 164-176, December.
    7. Tiwari, Sandeep Kumar & Paltasingh, Kirtti Ranjan & Jena, Pabitra Kumar, 2020. "Caste-class association and school participation in Uttar Pradesh, India: Evidence from NSSO data," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    8. Tanusree Mishra & Tanmoyee Banerjee (Chatterjee), 2020. "Child marriage: some facts from selected Indian states," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(3), pages 2093-2110.
    9. Cassan, Guilhem, 2019. "Affirmative action, education and gender: Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 51-70.
    10. Sundaram, Aparna & Vanneman, Reeve, 2008. "Gender Differentials in Literacy in India: The Intriguing Relationship with Women's Labor Force Participation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 128-143, January.
    11. Saing, Chan Hang & Cannonier, Colin, 2017. "Arsenic Exposure and School Participation in Cambodia," GLO Discussion Paper Series 95, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    12. David K. Evans & Arkadipta Ghosh, 2008. "Prioritizing Educational Investments in Children in the Developing World," Working Papers 587, RAND Corporation.
    13. Rozana Himaz & Harsha Aturupane, 2011. "Education and Household Welfare in Sri Lanka from 1985 to 2006," Economics Series Working Papers 527, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    14. Venkatesh Murthy & Diptanshu Gaur & Korak Bhaduri, 2022. "Parents, Pupils, Pedagogues, and Policies: A Rectangle of School Education for Immigrant’s Children," Systemic Practice and Action Research, Springer, vol. 35(5), pages 607-634, October.
    15. Mehtabul Azam, 2012. "A distributional analysis of social group inequality in rural India," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(4), pages 415-432, May.
    16. Maitra, Pushkar & Pal, Sarmistha & Sharma, Anurag, 2016. "Absence of Altruism? Female Disadvantage in Private School Enrollment in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 105-125.
    17. Guadalupe Bedoya & Aidan Coville & Johannes Haushofer & Mohammad Isaqzadeh & Jeremy P. Shapiro, 2019. "No Household Left Behind: Afghanistan Targeting the Ultra Poor Impact Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 25981, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Farzana Afridi, 2011. "The Impact of School Meals on School Participation: Evidence from Rural India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(11), pages 1636-1656.
    19. Pal, Sarmistha & Kingdon, Geeta G., 2010. "Can Private School Growth Foster Universal Literacy? Panel Evidence from Indian Districts," IZA Discussion Papers 5274, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Pushkar Maitra, 2003. "Schooling and Educational Attainment: Evidence from Bangladesh," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 129-153.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    education; school lunches; quasi-natural experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • O22 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Project Analysis
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:gdec09:15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfselea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.