Chile's school feeding programme: targeting experience

The Chilean School Feeding Programme's (SFP) main objective is to provide social and food assistance to low income children attending public schools. It targets 1,2 million children daily with meals provided by local food companies. These have different caloric content, depending on the child's age and the school's vulnerability index, which is indirectly related with the poverty level of its students and determined yearly by a targeting model. There are two models, one for children in primary and the other for those in secondary schools, both based on variables gathered from first and ninth graders respectively and determined by a logistic regression analysis. This methodology provides a vulnerability index per school which allows these to be ranked; a cut-off (established by available fiscal budget) determines the type and amount of meals received by the school. The decision of who receives the meal inside the school is determined by a committee. Presently coverage amounts to 40% of all primary schoolchildren in public schools. Evaluations of the targeting models have shown that targeting has improved over time; 80% of total SFP funding for primary schools is concentrated on the two lowest income quintiles, while at the secondary level, it only targets around 21% of potential beneficiaries, because coverage is much lower. Because the SFP provides a significant proportion of the daily energy needs, it has shown to be an excellent incentive for poor parents to send their children to school. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.