Participation in the National School Lunch Program and Food Security: An Analysis of Transitions into Kindergarten

Colleen M. Heflin, University of Missouri, Columbia
Irma Arteaga, University of Missouri, Columbia

We examine the change in household and child food security as children enter kindergarten and are able to access the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the National School Breakfast (NSB) programs. We use data from the 2001-2010 Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey of Youth Birth Cohort (ECLS-B. We estimate the causal effect of the transition into kindergarten on the risk of food insecurity using a variety of techniques including fixed effects and regression discontinuity. Since the observed and unobserved determinants of school nutrition programs and food insecurity are likely to trend smoothly across the kindergarten participation threshold, we can use the estimates of discontinuous jumps in school nutritional program participation and food insecurity at kindergarten entry to identify the causal effect of school nutrition program participation on food insecurity.