From Stockroom to Classroom: Impact of Meal Stocks on Attendance in a Kenyan School Feeding Program

From Stockroom to Classroom: Impact of Meal Stocks on Attendance in a Kenyan School Feeding Program

English

School Meal Programs (SMPs) have been shown to be effective in boosting enrollment, attendance, academic performance, and health outcomes of children. Leveraging unique daily administrative information on school feeding and attendance rates, this paper extends our understanding of how day-today SMP operations can impact student attendance decisions in a close community where information on the status of school meals for any given day are largely observable. We present evidence that attendance rates respond to a missed school-meal. More importantly, we find that parents and children are forward looking in their attendance decisions and preemptively reduce attendance rates when school stock levels are low enough to indicate the possibility of a missed school meal. Low meal stocks push students to attend another nearby school. Additionally, we find that school management also adapt the provision of school, in the form of the amount of food provided, in response to existing stock levels. Our findings suggest that for SMP implementors in developing countries communities, consideration needs to be given to policy and programs that can help schools smooth their stock levels to maintain attendance rate and provision of food for students.

ART 671

SSRN, 2025

eng

ANA-131485