Abstract

AGUILAR, Lucila  and  CHIRINO, Álvaro. Consequences of the absence of school breakfast/lunch: an impact evaluation. rlde [online]. 2021, n.35, pp.95-133. ISSN 2074-4706.

This research assesses the impact of Alimentación Complementaria Escolar (commonly known as school breakfast/snack) on household expenditure on food, health and food security. The research becomes important due to the global crisis caused by the New Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that forces most Latin American countries, including Bolivia, to remain in quarantine, thus stopping school activities and, consequently, depriving the children/adolescents of public schools the Alimentación Complementaria Escolar. Given that some students receive school breakfast/snack and others do not, a propensity score matching method is proposed to recreate an experimental context and, thus, to estimate the average treatment effect in a better way. The results of the estimation with the different inference methods used show that the receipt of Alimentación Complementaria Escolar represents a relief in the expenditure on food that households make and, results at the food security level, show that the absence of school breakfast/snack increases the probability that the household perceives some degree of food insecurity.

Keywords : Impact evaluation; school breakfast; education; propensity score matching.

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