Childhood nutrition and labor market outcomes: Evidence from a school breakfast program

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Butikofer, Aline; Molland, Eirin; Salvanes, Kjell G.
• 署名单位: Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.08.008
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 62-80
• 关键词: Long-term effects; nutrition; School meals

摘要

While a growing literature documents the short-term effects of public programs providing children with nutritious food, there is scarce evidence of the long-term effects of such programs. This paper studies the long-term and intergenerational consequences of access to nutritious food using the rollout of a free school breakfast program in Norwegian cities. This program provided children with nutritious food and replaced a hot school meal at the end of the day with similar caloric value but less micronutrients. Our results indicate that access to a nutritious school breakfast increases education by 0.1 years and earnings by 2-3%. In addition, we present empirical evidence that early exposure is most beneficial, that a longer treatment duration does not yield higher returns, and that the positive effects on men's earnings are transmitted across generations. Our results are mostly robust to adding municipality-specific time trends, event-study models support the validity of the research design, and most estimated effects survive adjustment for multiple hypothesis testing. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.