Assessment of the educational and health impacts of the mid-day meal program

480, Title II mid-day meal (MDM) program for primary school children in India. Special evaluation is based on a review, in light of six possible program benefits, of quantitative studies (1969-79) of the MDM program"s impact in five Indian states. The evidence provided by the studies, while meager and inconclusive, suggests that the MDM program represents an extremely inefficient use of A.I.D. resources. Although most of the studies ignored the question of whether or not the program increased enrollment, all but one concluded that the program did increase attendance; only two studies, however, sufficiently documented this conclusion. Only two studies examined whether the program reduced drop-out rates and none explored repetition rates. No significant relationship between the MDM program and academic performance was found in the two studies examining this question. Reviews of the program"s health impact by four of the five studies found little relationship between the program and anthropometric measures such as weight, height, chest circumference, etc. This is not surprising, however, since two of the studies did not include significant numbers of nutritionally disadvantaged children and the food received by children aged 6-11 was only a small fraction of the recommended daily allowance. In none of the studies was the MDM"s indirect impact on school attendance via improved health status systematically and rigorously studied. Although the lack of baseline and longitudinal data on the MDM program"s impact and its expensiveness in relation to India"s per student investment in primary education should make USAID/I and the Government of India skeptical about conducting the large-scale evaluation of the program that seems called for, the evaluator describes three options for such an evaluation: (1) a retrospective analysis of district- or block-level educational data to examine how enrollment rates have changed in the last 20 years as a result of the MDM program and changing socioeconomic conditions; (2) a longitudinal analysis of the MDM program recently begun in Maharashtra; or (3) a cross-sectional analysis of the MDM program in three states.