The effects of universal free lunch provision on student achievement: Evidence from South Korea

This paper examines the impact of the Universal Free Lunch Program (UFLP) on student achievement in South Korea. I leverage the staggered rollout of the UFLP across South Korean provinces and employ difference-in-differences strategies to estimate the causal effects of the program. Taking advantage of rich school-level data, I find that providing a free lunch to all students leads to improvements in academic achievement on average. I also test for heterogeneous effects and find that the benefits of the UFLP appear universally across different baseline participation rates in the means-tested lunch subsidy. After exploring numerous potential mechanisms, I find suggestive evidence that the nutritional channel is effectively absent. Instead, the findings suggest that increased household investment in education—evidenced by increased participation in and spending on academic after-school programs—is a key pathway underlying the achievement gains. These results suggest that parents redirected the saved lunch fees toward educational investment, highlighting the importance of labels attached to public assistance.