Farzana Afridi (Indian Statistical Institute) Bidisha Barooah (Delhi School of Economics)

1. School Meals and Student Participation in Urban India: Distributional Implications and Program Design FarzanaAfridi (Indian Statistical Institute) BidishaBarooah (Delhi School of Economics) RohiniSomanathan (Delhi School of Economics) UNSW Workshop (September 16, 2011)

2. % of under-fives who are % of under-fives who are % GDP % Primary school severely or moderately severely or moderately growth enrolment underweight stunted rate 1 2 3 4 India 83 48 48 8.3 China 100 7 15 10.1 Brazil 94 2 7 5.7 1: UNICEF 2: NCHS/WHO 2003-2008 3: WHO 2003-2008 4: World Bank Motivation:India in comparison with other developing nations • Lags behind in education and health outcomes compared to countries with comparable economic growth rates

3. Percentage of children never enrolled (age 6-10 years) Girls Boys India 19.3 20.79 Rural 20.69 23.25 Urban 17.1 16.78 Delhi 16.26 17.17 Source: NFHS-3 Malnutrition in children below the age of 3 Underweight Stunted India 40.4 44.4 Rural 43.7 47.2 Urban 30.1 37.4 Delhi 24.9 43.2 Source: NFHS-3 Motivation:Education and Health Indicators in India • Low levels of education accompany poor health indicators even in urban India

4. Introduction: Background • Large scale on-site school meal program mandated in all public primary schools since 1995 • Transition from ready to eat snacks to cooked meals in 2003. • Insignificant change in cost of the program Research question: • Can change in design of school subsidy programs impact educational outcomes? • What are the distributional implications of benefits of school subsidies, if any?

5. Preview of Results • Controling for unobservable individual characteristics, we find a 5 percentage point average increase in daily school attendance due to cooked school meals • Change in program design even with insignificant changes in cost structure improved average outcomes • No improvement in participation rates of girls • No improvement in participation rates of low castes • Disadvantaged schools may be poor program implementers

6. Literature • Programs that subsidize the cost of schooling are popular policy initiatives for increasing school participation in developing countries. • Conditional cash transfers (Progresa in Mexico) • Free textbooks and uniforms (Kenya, India) • Scholarships (India) • Free food grains (Bangladesh) • Evidence of positive effect of school transfer programs on enrolment (Schultz, 2004) • Difficult to measure the effect on daily school participation or attendance – less noisy measure of participation. • Transfers in these programs either did not systematically vary with daily attendance (viz. free uniforms and textbooks) or attendance was already high prior to program implementation (Progresa)

7. Literature • Cost-benefit analysis of school transfer programs do not suggest any one subsidy program as most effective • No research on impact of program design holding program costs constant

8. Literature on school meals • Ahmed (2004, Bangladesh); Vermeersch and Kremer (2005, Kenya) • In the Indian context, Afridi (2011) finds a 12 percentage point increase in attendance rates of girls in Grade 1 in rural Madhya Pradesh; insignificant effect on boys, higher grades and enrollments • Primary school studies do not account for unobservable heterogeneity at the individual level.

9. Program background: Design • Nearly 80% of all public primary schools in Delhi are run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), accounting for almost 85% of all public primary school enrollments in the city. • Prior to 2002-03, ready-to-eat snacks was served in MCD schools such as biscuits, roasted grams, wheat puffs and fruity bread (but mostly biscuits). • Provision of cooked meals started in municipal primary schools (Grades 1 to 5) of Delhi in July 2003. • Phased implementation of cooked meal scheme • Phase 1: 410 of 1862 MCD schools got cooked meal between July and August 2003 • Phase 2: Remaining schools got cooked meals between September and November 2003 • In Phase 1, local NGOs/ service providers were selected on the basis of availability of infrastructure and distance from schools. • Schools close to the kitchens transitioned to cooked meals in Phase 1.

10. Program background: Costs • Providers re-imbursed at the rate of Rs. 2 per child by Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) under both cooked and ready to eat program. • The raw foodgrains (or foodgrain content of ready to eat items) and transport costs related to foodgrain procurement were fully subsidized by the federal government under both programs. • Schools were mandated to provide atleast 300 kcal per child per day (or 100 grams of raw wheat) in cooked meals and approximatey 265 kcal (or 75.6 grams of raw wheat) in the regime of packaged foods. • 10 paise or less than 5% difference in per day per child costs. Annual costs per child are comparable if regularity of both programs is similar.

11. Data • Randomly sampled 26 primary schools in one of the 12 municipal zones (Central) of Delhi. • Between January 2007 and December 2008 two types of current and retrospective data was collected. • School level data on facilities and implementation of the program (26 schools) • Child level data of monthly attendance and family characteristics (22 of 26 schools ) • Restrict sample to 2002-03 and 2003-04. Total of 3262 students

13. Table 1: School characteristics in April 2003

14. Table 2: Individual characteristics of students enrolled in April 2003: Standard errors in parentheses * significant at 5% ** significant at 1%

15. Figure 1: Attendance rate in 2002-03 by treatment status: (school balanced panel, N=19) Note: Only schools for which data for both 2002 and 2003 are available included.

16. Methodology • Uses the staggered implementation of cooked meals. • Almost 50% of the sampled schools implemented MDM program before September 2003 and the other half, after September 2003. • Treatment group : 10 schools which implemented MDM before September 2003 (in July or August) . • Control group: 12 schools which implemented it after September 2003 (in October or November).

17. Number of sampled schools in Phase I and II

18. Estimation strategy School-fixed effects: Pijt = α + β0Tij + β1t + β2 (Tij* t) + γ Xij+ μj + εijt (1) • Pijt : Participation outcome for individual i in school j at time t • Tij : 1 if school j transitioned to cooked meals before September 2003, 0 if after September 2003 • t : 1 if observation is recorded for September 2003, 0 if September 2002 • Xij : vector of individual characteristics • μj : unobservable, time-invariant school characteristics • β2 : Coefficient of interest

19. Estimation strategy Individual-fixed effects: Pijt = α + β0Tij + β1t + β2 (Tij* t) + δi + εijt (2) - δi : unobservable, time-invariant individual characteristics Outcomes: • monthly attendance rate: total number of classes attended by a student divided by the total number of classes that the student could have potentially attended. • current enrollment

20. Estimation strategy Analysis at the grade level: Pijt = α + β0Tij + β1t + β2 (Tij* t) + δi + εijt (2) Tij=0 for all schools in our sample in April, 2003 (since none were offering cooked school meals) Tij=1 for those schools which transitioned to cooked meals between July and September, 2003 and 0 otherwise.

21. Estimation strategy • The variation in the implementation of the cooked school meal program is independent of time trends in participation. • No systematic differences in the reliability of the school records of control and treatment group of schools.

22. Table 3: Effect of school meals on attendance rate, 2002-03 (Balanced School Panel) Standard errors in parentheses. *significant at 5% **significant at 1%. Controls for socio-economic group and father’s education.

23. Table 4:Effect of school meals on attendance rate, 2002-03 (Balanced Individual Panel) Standard errors in parentheses. *significant at 5% **significant at 1%. With controls for grade, social group and father’s Occupation in school fixed effects model.

24. Table 5: Effect of school meals on attendance rate by social group , 2002-03 (Balanced Individual Panel) Standard errors in parentheses. *significant at 5% **significant at 1%. Missing caste data for some students.

25. Table 6: Effect of school meals on attendance rate by social group , 2002-03 (Balanced Individual Panel, schools with atleast 10% of each group in 2002) Standard errors in parentheses. *significant at 5% **significant at 1%.

26. Table 7: Effect of school meals on attendance rate by social group , 2002-03 (Balanced Panel, schools with atleast 50% of SC/ST/OBC students in 2002) Standard errors in parentheses. *significant at 5% **significant at 1%.

27. Table 8: Effect of school meals on attendance rate by grade, Apr-Sep 2003 (Balanced Individual Panel): Standard errors in parentheses * significant at 5% ** significant at 1%

28. Table 9: Effect of school meals on student survival, 2003

32. Conclusions • The evidence suggests a rise in average quantity of inputs in the household production function for education: • On-site school meals can be effective in improving the daily participation rates • Change in program design itself can lead to significant improvement in average outcomes even in the absence of any significant change in cost • Taste and variety of meals in program changed • School subsidy programs may not have significant impact in poorly administered schools or low quality schools. • Are impacts conditional on school quality?