The long-term impact of the nutrition improvement program on children’s education outcomes: Empirical evidence from rural China

IF 6 1区经济学 Q1 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY

Food Policy Pub Date : 2025-07-14 DOI:10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102915

Zhen Guan , Yang He , Xinjie Shi , Chen Zhang

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Existing research on nutritional assistance largely focuses on its short-term effects. Using data from the 2019 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this research investigates the long-term effects, underlying mechanisms, and cost-effectiveness of the Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP), a widespread school meal program in rural China, on students’ educational attainment. Our findings indicate that the NIP significantly increases the likelihood of students attending high school and college and extends their years of education. These results are robust across various sensitivity tests. The NIP improves educational attainment by enhancing students’ health, cognitive abilities, non-cognitive skills, and parental educational expectations. Furthermore, the impact is more pronounced among students with lower parental education levels and those in western regions. A cost-benefit analysis shows that the economic returns of the NIP surpass its costs, highlighting its substantial economic efficiency. This research underscores the importance of school meal programs as a human capital investment and provides valuable insights for policymakers in China and other developing nations seeking to address educational inequality and improve population health and well-being.

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营养改善计划对儿童教育成果的长期影响：来自中国农村地区的经验证据

目前关于营养援助的研究主要集中在其短期效果上。本研究利用2019年中国家庭财务调查（CHFS）的数据，调查了营养改善计划（NIP）对学生教育成就的长期影响、潜在机制和成本效益。营养改善计划是中国农村广泛开展的一项学校供餐计划。我们的研究结果表明，NIP显著增加了学生上高中和大学的可能性，并延长了他们的受教育年限。这些结果在各种灵敏度测试中都是可靠的。NIP通过提高学生的健康、认知能力、非认知技能和家长的教育期望来提高受教育程度。此外，这种影响在父母教育程度较低的学生和西部地区的学生中更为明显。成本效益分析表明，NIP的经济收益超过其成本，突出了其可观的经济效率。这项研究强调了学校供餐计划作为人力资本投资的重要性，并为中国和其他发展中国家寻求解决教育不平等和改善人口健康和福祉的政策制定者提供了有价值的见解。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Food Policy 管理科学-农业经济与政策

CiteScore

11.40

自引率

4.60%

发文量

128

审稿时长

62 days

期刊介绍： Food Policy is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original research and novel evidence on issues in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of policies for the food sector in developing, transition, and advanced economies. Our main focus is on the economic and social aspect of food policy, and we prioritize empirical studies informing international food policy debates. Provided that articles make a clear and explicit contribution to food policy debates of international interest, we consider papers from any of the social sciences. Papers from other disciplines (e.g., law) will be considered only if they provide a key policy contribution, and are written in a style which is accessible to a social science readership.