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Paying For Free Lunch: The Impact Of Cep Universal Free Meals On Revenues, Spending, And Student Health, Michah W. Rothbart, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Emily Gutierrez

Center for Policy Research

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 allows school districts to provide free meals to all students if more than 40 percent of students are individually eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. While emerging evidence documents positive effects on student behavior and academics (Gordon and Ruffini, 2019; Schwartz and Rothbart, 2020), critics worry that Universal Free Meals (UFM) has unintended consequences, including exacerbating student obesity and adding financial burden onto school districts. We use school and district level data from New York State (NYS) and a difference-in-differences design to test whether concerns over negative …