School Lunch Quality and Academic Performance

Improving the nutritional content of public school meals is a topic of intense policy interest. A main motivation is the health of school children, and, in particular, the rising childhood obesity rate. Medical and nutrition literature has long argued that a healthy diet can have a second important impact: improved cognitive function. In this paper, we test whether offering healthier lunches affects student achievement as measured by test scores. Our sample includes all California (CA) public schools over a five-year period. We estimate difference-in-difference style regressions using variation that takes advantage of frequent lunchvendor contract turnover. Students at schools that contract with a healthy school-lunch vendor score higher on CA state achievement tests. We do not find any evidence that healthier school lunches lead to a decrease in obesity rates. The test score gains, while modest in magnitude, come at very low cost. JEL Codes: I20, I12