Fostering human capital development through school feeding: Evidence from Malawi

Last registered on July 08, 2024

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Fostering human capital development through school feeding: Evidence from Malawi
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0013049
Initial registration date
February 22, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 06, 2024, 3:14 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
July 08, 2024, 9:24 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
World Bank

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
World Food Programme
PI Affiliation
World Bank
PI Affiliation
World Food Programme

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2023-09-10
End date
2025-07-01
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
School attendance remains an open policy issue in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where free primary education has not translated into full attendance. The cost of attending and learning is higher for children born to subsistence farming households, who are more frequently sick or malnourished, and whose school time overlaps with farm work. We leverage the randomized expansion of the national school feeding program in Malawi to study the impacts of a negative shock on the cost of attending school; we aim to understand if the program is effective in bringing children to the classroom and fostering better health and education, especially during the lean season when child labor has a higher opportunity-cost.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Heirman, Jonas et al. 2024. "Fostering human capital development through school feeding: Evidence from Malawi." AEA RCT Registry. July 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.13049-1.1
Sponsors & Partners

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Schools involved in the home-grown school feeding program procure produce from local smallholder farmers’ organizations and store it; volunteers from local communities take turns in preparing the food every day. Children receive a warm daily meal on the school premises before school starts. Meals are prepared following predefined recipes to ensure they are healthy and nutritious.
Intervention Start Date
2023-09-10
Intervention End Date
2025-07-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
First Stage Outcomes: child dietary diversity, child food insecurity experience scale
Second Stage Outcomes: child mental health/psychological wellbeing (life satisfaction, stress, depression, agency), child physical health (health status, nutritional status), child school attendance, child school progression (dropout, repetition, new enrollment), learning (reading skills, numeracy and mathematics skills), child cognitive ability (attention span, verbal working memory, fluid intelligence)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We leverage the randomized expansion of the national school feeding program in Malawi to study the impacts of a negative shock on the cost of attending school; we aim to understand if the program is effective in bringing children to the classroom and fostering better health and education, especially during the lean season when child labor has a higher opportunity-cost.
We randomize the provision of school feeding to eligible schools and compare the outcomes of children enrolled in schools where a school feeding program is implemented to the outcomes of children enrolled in schools where a school feeding program is not implemented. Out of the 88 schools in the sample, we assign 44 schools to the treatment group and 44 schools to the control group.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Primary Schools (Clusters)
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
88 schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
1760 children
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
No school feeding: 44 schools, 880 children
School feeding: 44 schools, 880 children
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
We base our power calculations on five measures: household food consumption scores (FCS, mean 45.5 and standard deviation 17.39), household food expenditures (mean 8.46 and standard deviation 9.55), an indicator for whether the household is worried about lack of food (mean 0.61 and standard deviation 0.49), weight-for-age (mean -1.43 and standard deviation 1.64), and height-for-age (mean -0.64 and standard deviation 1.22). Assuming 44 schools per treatment arm, 20 children per school, one follow-up observation, and power of the test of 80%, yields a minimum detectable effect (MDE) of 0.19 standard deviations for FCS, food expenditures, weight-for-age, and height-for-age, and of 0.20 standard deviations for the worry indicator. With two follow-up measurements and assuming a correlation of 0.2 between follow-up measurements, our experiment is powered to detect an effect of 0.14 standard deviations for FCS and food expenditures, 0.15 for weight-for-age and height-for-age, and 0.16 for the worry indicator. Increasing the correlation between follow up rounds to 0.5 yields an MDE of 0.16 for all indicators excluding weight-for-age, whose MDE is 0.17 standard deviations. Household FCS, food expenditure, and the worry indicator come from the 2015-2016 wave of the Malawi Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS). Weight-for-age and height-for-age data come from the 2019 wave of the Malawi Demographic and Health survey (DHS).
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Health Media Lab IRB
IRB Approval Date
2024-02-12
IRB Approval Number
#2376
IRB Name
National Commission For Science and Technology, Malawi
IRB Approval Date
2024-01-30
IRB Approval Number
NO. P.09/23/797
Analysis Plan

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information