School feeding programs, intrahousehold allocation and the nutrition of siblings: Evidence from a randomized trial in rural Burkina Faso

We evaluate the impact of two school feeding schemes on health outcomes of pre-school age children in Burkina Faso: school meals which provide students with lunch each school day, and take home rations which provide girls with 10 kg of cereal flour each month, conditional on 90% attendance rate. We investigated the pass through to younger siblings of the beneficiaries and found that take home rations have increased weight-for-age of boys and girls under age 5 by 0.4 standard deviations compared to a control group. In the same age range, school meals did not have any significant effect on weights of siblings. We provide suggestive evidence indicating that most of the gains are realized through intra-household food reallocation. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.