Abstract
School meals have been introduced as an important policy tool to improve education outcomes and pupil's nutritional status. This study uses a unique and large-scale randomised field experiment to assess the effectiveness of such programmes on pupils's performance (test scores in French, mathematics and the aggregate) and on the internal efficiency of schools (enrolment, promotion, repetition and dropout) in rural Senegal. We show that attrition and non-compliance occurred not at random in the experiment. Relying on the average treatment effect and the complier effects, we find that the programme has a positive and significant impact on pupils' scores and on the enrolment rate. However, the repetition rate increased. The intervention has a marked gender effect. Cost-effectiveness analysis shows that deworming intervention is more cost-effective than school meals
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 533-557 |
Number of pages | 25 |
Journal | Journal of African Economies |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2019 |
JEL classifications
- i15 - Health and Economic Development
- i21 - Analysis of Education
Keywords
- Senegal
- academic performance
- compliance
- complier effects
- cost-effectiveness
- education outcomes
- experimental study
- food quality
- randomised experiment
- rural area
- school meals
- student
- EDUCATION
- TRIAL
- PROGRAMS
- NUTRITION
- IMPACTS
- FOOD