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National School Lunch Program Participation and Child Body Weight

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Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between National School Lunch Program (NSLP) participation and body weight using longitudinal data for public school children in grades 1–12. NSLP participation is associated with higher body weight among girls, but not boys. Quantile regression results show higher body mass index percentile for girls between the 25th–90th quantiles (whereas associations occur at the 75th–85th quantiles for boys and are smaller in magnitude compared to girls. Accounting for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, individual-level fixed effects models found no significant effect of NSLP participation for the full sample or by gender, suggesting that the associations are not causal.

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Notes

  1. The opportunity cost of a school lunch could be the cost of a brown bag lunch from home, which requires parental resources, including access to grocery stores in the home neighborhood; a fast food meal; an à la carte meal at school; or even a vending machine snack. Alternatively, the child may skip lunch altogether.

  2. Even though some private schools also offer the NSLP on their campuses, there may be self-selection into the private school enrollment and varying quality of the school lunches, hence this paper focuses on public schools only.

  3. We used the CDC SAS program for calculating age- and gender-adjusted growth charts (http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/growthcharts/resources/sas.htm).

  4. The fruit and vegetable price index is based on the fruit prices (bananas, frozen orange juice, and peaches) and vegetable prices (frozen corn, lettuce, sweet peas, potatoes, and tomatoes) available in the ACCRA data. The fast-food price index uses the three fast food prices reported in ACCRA: McDonald's hamburger sandwich, 11–12-inch thin crust Pizza Hut or Pizza Inn pizza, and Kentucky Fried Chicken or Church's fried chicken. Powell and Chaloupka [2011] provide more detailed information on the construction of the price indices.

  5. Fast food restaurants are defined as “fast-food restaurants and stands” (excluding coffee shops) plus chain and independent pizzerias. Non-fast food restaurants are formed as the total number of “eating places” (excluding ice cream, soft drink, and soda fountain stands; caterers; and contract food services) minus fast-food restaurants as specified above. Data on food and restaurant outlets are available and used for Quarter 1 of each year. All outlet measures are linked to the individual-level data at the zip code level and are defined as the number of outlets per 10,000 capita (using the 2000 Census zip-code level population estimates).

  6. We chose LPM for the dichotomous weight status outcomes as suggested by Angrist and Pischke [2009] because: (1) the logit/probit results are very similar; (2) heteroskedasticity is not usually important; and (3) for the ease or convenience of exposition. We have corrected for heteroskedasticity by using robust standard errors.

  7. We tested two possible IVs: (1) the proportion of students in the child's school eligible for free lunch (i.e., number of students in the school eligible for free lunch divided by the total number of students in the school), as it captures the degree of stigma associated with school lunches, which was previously reported as a common reason for NSLP non-participation [Glantz et al. 1994; Gleason 1995; Mirtcheva and Powell 2009]; and (2) The total school expenditures per student. The data for these potential IVs were obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core Data merged with the CDS by child's school identifier geocode information. Both instruments were weak and therefore we did not pursue the IV analysis. Bound et al. [1995] provide a detailed discussion on problems with weak IV estimation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank participants at the Eastern Economic Association, Midwest Economic Association, and Illinois Economic Association annual meetings for helpful comments and suggestions. This research was supported by the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture, Cooperative Research Grant 58-5000-6-0036 and the National Research Initiative of the US Department of Agriculture, Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service Grant 2005-35215-15372. Mirtcheva thanks also the Chicago Center of Excellence in Health Promotion Economics for research fellowship support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, The College of New Jersey, Business Building, 114, P.O. Box 7718, 2000 Pennington Road, Ewing, 08628, NJ, USA

    Donka M Mirtcheva

  2. Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1747 W. Roosevelt Road, M/C 275, Chicago, 60608, IL, USA

    Lisa M Powell

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  1. Donka M Mirtcheva
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Mirtcheva, D., Powell, L. National School Lunch Program Participation and Child Body Weight. Eastern Econ J 39, 328–345 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/eej.2012.14

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