Does Free Lunch Work? Evidence from Elementary School Lunch Program in Taiwan

Numerous studies have shown that early childhood nutrition has long-term effects on later health outcomes, however, few research has been done on the labor market performance and intergenerational health effects. During the 1960s, Taiwan launched a school lunch program, funded by the U.S. aid, for elementary school students. This paper evaluates the long-term effects of the school lunch program on lunch recipients. We measure the extent of the school lunch program at the county level using the percentage of elementary school students who are provided with school lunch. Our identification strategy is therefore a difference-in-differences approach which compares the outcome difference between exposed and non-exposed cohorts in counties with a higher program intensity to the outcome difference in counties with a lower program intensity. Using merged administrative data from Taiwan, we find that children who lived in the county with a higher lunch intensity are more likely to be employed and earn more during their middle ages than their peers who lived in the county with a lower lunch intensity. Furthermore, using detailed information on the birth registry, we find that birth weight of offspring of school lunch recipients are higher, showing that early nutritional intakes have persistent intergenerational effects.