TY - JOUR AU - Bhattacharya,Jayanta AU - Currie,Janet AU - Haider,Steven TI - Breakfast of Champions? The School Breakfast Program and the Nutrition of Children and Families JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 10608 PY - 2004 Y2 - July 2004 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10608 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10608.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Jay Bhattacharya 117 Encina Commons Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-6019 Tel: 650/736-0404 Fax: 650/723-1919 E-Mail: jay@stanford.edu Janet Currie Princeton University 316 Wallace Hall Princeton, NJ 08544 Tel: 609-258-7393 Fax: 609-258-5974 E-Mail: jcurrie@princeton.edu Steven J. Haider Department of Economics Michigan State University 101 Marshall Hall East Lansing, MI 48824 Tel: 517/355-1860 Fax: 517/432-1068 E-Mail: haider@msu.edu AB - We use the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) III to examine the effect of the availability of the school breakfast program (SBP). Our work builds on previous research in four ways: First, we develop a transparent difference-in-differences strategy to account for unobserved differences between students with access to SBP and those without. Second, we examine serum measures of nutrient in addition to intakes based on dietary recall data. Third, we ask whether the SBP improves the diet by increasing/or decreasing the intake of nutrients relative to meaningful threshold levels. Fourth, we examine the effect of the SBP on other members of the family besides the school-aged child. We have three main findings. First, the SBP helps students build good eating habits: SBP increases scores on the healthy eating index, reduces the percentage of calories from fat, and reduces the probability of low fiber intake. Second, the SBP reduces the probability of serum micronutrient deficiencies in vitamin C, vitamin E, and folate, and it increases the probability that children meet USDA recommendations for potassium and iron intakes. Since we find no effect on total calories these results indicate that the program improves the quality of food consumed. Finally, in households with school-aged children, both preschool children and adults have healthier diets and consume less fat when the SBP is available. These results suggest that school nutrition programs may be an effective way to combat both nutritional deficiencies and excess consumption among children and their families. ER -