As discussed in the data and methods section, our empirical approach uses all three of these differences (before vs. We observe schools both before and after program adoption as well as schools that never adopt and further compare economically disadvantaged students (who are likely to benefit from the program) and their non-disadvantaged counterparts. We combine these participation data with restricted administrative student and school data, which allow us to observe how economically disadvantaged students in schools with and without such programs performed on end-of-grade tests in reading and mathematics. This research uses data from Northwestern North Carolina tracking the first adoptions and subsequent rapid growth of the BackPack program across schools there. This brief summarizes our recently published article at the Economics of Education Review, which aimed to understand how these BackPack programs relate to academic success. These programs have grown rapidly since their inception at a single Arkansas elementary school in 1995, now serving more than 450,000 children just through Feeding America’s national network of foodbanks alone. To mitigate food insecurity on days when free school meals are unavailable, foodbanks have partnered with schools to create weekend feeding, or “BackPack,” programs that provide children with a bag of nonperishable food to nourish them over the weekend. School meals fill an important gap in meeting household food demand during the week but cannot meet needs outside of school hours.
Nationwide, over half a million children live in households that report very low food security among children, meaning a child is not eating enough, going hungry, skipping a meal, or not eating for a full day because the household can’t afford food. Improvements are large enough to substantially reduce the performance gap experienced by economically disadvantaged students.
The impacts on test scores are similar to those found for other nutritional interventions in prior research.