Take-up of Free School Meals: price effects and peer effects

Publication type

Journal Article

Author

Publication date

October 15, 2015

Summary:

29% of the 1.4 million eligible children do not participate in the UK's
Free School Meals programme. Like other welfare benefits, take-up of
free school meals is affected by stigma and lack of information. This
paper uses a fixed-effect instrumental variables strategy to evaluate
the role of peer-group participation in overcoming these barriers.
Identification of endogenous peer effects is achieved by exploiting a
scheme that extended free school meal entitlement to all children in
some areas. Results show that a 10 percentage point rise in peer-group
take-up reduces non-participation by 3.3–4.0 percentage points, or
between 29% and 35%.

Published in

Economica

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 82 , p.976 -993

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecca.12147

ISSN

130427

Subjects


Related Publications

#523126

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest