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United States of America

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers several child nutrition programs to support food security and diet quality in the U.S. The two largest are the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP), which serve free or low-cost nutritious meals to tens of millions of children and adolescents each day (hereafter “children” for brevity). In Federal fiscal year (FY) 2019 (October 1, 2018, through September 30, 2019), before the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the NSLP and SBP together accounted for about 79 percent of USDA expenditures on its child nutrition programs. click here to learn more

Key indicators

202220202013

School Meals

Number of pre-primary, primary and secondary school children receiving school meal

28million

Children

Enrolment

Children enrolled in primary schools in United States of America

24.8million

Children

Jobs

Jobs created as a result of school feeding

N/A

Direct Jobs

Funding

Annual financial investment in school meals

9.2billion

US Dollars

Policy Frameworks

Has United States of America adopted a school meals policy?

Yes

Complementary Activities

Implemented in conjunction with school meals

2/10

SDG4

Proportion of school-attending children receiving school meals (coverage).

Coming soon

School Meals Case Study: United States of America

Publication date: June 2023

United States of America

Prepared by the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, an initiative of the School Meals Coalition.

Coming Soon

Emerging Research on School Health and Nutrition

Value for money

This indicator aims to quantify the returns of national school meal programmes across multiple sectors, including education, health, social protection, and agriculture. The economic methodology and analyses build upon the global model previously developed jointly by World Food Programme, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition. The study is currently being finalised in eight African countries that is, Malawi, Niger, Cote D’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Burundi, Namibia, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique.

BOND-KIDS

Biomarkers of Nutrition for Development-Knowledge Indicating Dietary Sufficiency (BOND-KIDS)

School-age (between 5 and 19 years) represents a range of critical stages in both physical and neurological development. Each developmental stage is nutritionally sensitive and demands food security, ensuring stable access to and availability of a high-quality diet to meet nutritional requirements. The BOND programme, an international collaboration led by the Paediatric Growth and Nutrition Branch of the US Department of Health and Human Services, began in 2010 with a focus on discovery, development, and implementation of reliable and valid biomarkers to assess nutrient exposure, status, function, and effect. The BOND-KIDS project continues the effort to understand and harmonize biomarkers with a focus on school-age children, to address a range of issues impacting the domestic and global food and nutrition enterprise, including food insecurity.

Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS)

The standard summary metric of education-based human capital used in macro analyses—the average number of years of schooling in a population—is based only on quantity. But ignoring schooling quality turns out to be a major omission. As recent research shows, students in different countries who have completed the same number of years of school often have vastly different learning outcomes. This indicator combines quantity and quality of schooling into a single easy-to-understand metric of progress, revealing considerably larger cross-country education gaps than the standard metric. The cross-country comparisons produced by this measure are robust to different ways of adjusting for learning (for example, by using different international assessments or different summary learning indicators), and the assumptions and implications of LAYS are consistent with other evidence, including other approaches to quality adjustment.

Adolescence	Adolescence is the phase of life between childhood and adulthood, from ages 10 to 19. As a period of life characterized by important physical, psychological, and social changes - with specific health and developmental needs - adolescence carries new risks, but also provides unique opportunities. Investments in adolescents today will have broad implications not only for their own lives but also for family members and broader communities alike. The adolescents of today will be the parents, the teachers, and the policymakers of tomorrow.
Beneficiaries	Those who receive the benefits of a particular social programme. For this publication, it refers to primary and secondary school-age children between 5-18 years who receive food in school feeding programmes.
Costs	The per-child cost of school feeding is estimated as the total expenditures associated with school feeding activities divided by the number of beneficiaries. The figure reflects costs related to commodity procurement, transportation, storage and handling, and personnel. Community contributions are not included (Gelli & Daryanani, 2013). Cost recovery refers to the programme costs being offset by contributions from the beneficiaries or communities.
Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4)	The proportion of school-attending children receiving school meals
Development partners	An umbrella term for stakeholders that support the development efforts of national, subnational, or local authorities, depending on the particular context. Development partners can include: bilateral donors (national governments providing international development assistance); UN agencies and institutions (WFP, UNICEF, FAO, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNSCN, WHO…); international financial institutions (International Monetary Fund, World Bank, AfDB, AsDB, EBRD, IADB…); other multilateral agencies (e.g. IsDB, EIB, OFID, AIIB…); multi-stakeholder partnership global pooled funds (GPE, ECW…); international non-governmental organizations (Plan International, Save the Children International, demo International, Care International, Relief International, Dubai Cares…); international civil society organizations (Partnership for Child Development, International Food Policy Research Institute, the Millennium Villages Project, GCNF…); and civil society at the local level.
Deworming	A treatment to control the intestinal worm infections such as helminths (roundworm, ringworm, and hookworm) and schistosomiasis. The World Health Organization has recommended giving children albendazole or mebendazole to treat helminths and praziquantel to treat schistosomiasis.
Dietary Diversity	The consumption of a proper balance of different foods that provide all the macronutrients and micronutrients needed for healthy growth and productive life.
Food-based safety nets	Category of interventions that provide direct, regular and predictable food assistance, to the most vulnerable people to: (1) prevent them from falling below a minimum level of food security as a result of a shock; (2) to increase their resilience to shocks; and (3) in some cases, to promote their food security (Grosh et al., 2008). The retail value of a food transfer in the local market is referred to as an income transfer.
Food Systems	Interlocking networks of relationships that encompass the functions and activities involved in producing, processing, marketing, consuming, and disposing of food from agriculture, forestry or fisheries.
Fortification	The practice of deliberately increasing the content of essential micronutrients (such as Vitamin A, iron, iodine, or zinc) to foods (WHO and FAO, 2006).
Home-Grown School Feeding	A school feeding model that is designed to provide children in schools with safe, diverse and nutritious food, sourced locally from smallholders.
Investment	The total budget allocated to school feeding by the government or WFP, or an estimation of that budget. In this publication, these are estimates based on secondary data and not on information from national balance sheets.
National school feeding programme	A programme managed by the government either alone or with the support of WFP or other development partners to provide food on a regular basis to schoolchildren.
Nutrition-sensitive Programme	Interventions addressing the basic and underlying determinants of malnutrition; namely, food security, caregiving, and access to health services and a safe and hygienic environment. Nutrition-sensitive programmes also address the enabling environment, through technical assistance to governments, including advising on policies in complementary sectors.
School Feeding	The provision of food to children or their households through school-based programmes. Such programmes can provide meals, snacks or conditional household transfers in the form of cash, vouchers or in-kind, take-home rations.
School Meals Coalition	An emerging initiative of governments and a wide range of partners to drive actions that can urgently re-establish, improve and scale up food and education systems, support pandemic recovery and drive actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Social Protection	A set of policies and programmes aimed at preventing or protecting all people against poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion throughout their life-course, with particular emphasis on vulnerable groups.
School Health and Nutrition	Health and nutrition programming designed for school-age children, as well as outreach activities that expand the effect of programmes within communities and to children not in schools. The services provided through School Health and Nutrition go beyond feeding, and may include additional interventions such as deworming, vaccination, vision screening, nutrition education, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).

Source	Symbol	Number of countries used in this report	Country names
African Union, Sustainable School Feeding in the African Union	AUSSF	2	Angola United Republic of Tanzania
USDA- sponsored, GCNF Global School Feeding Survey 2019	GCNF 2019	8	Colombia, Comoros, Egypt, Fiji Indonesia, Nauru, Republic of Moldova. Viet Nam
USDA- sponsored, GCNF Global School Feeding Survey 2021	GCNF 2021	125	Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Armenia, Australia Austria, Bahamas, Bangladesh Barbados, Belgium, Belize Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil Brunei, Darussalam, Bulgaria Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon Central African Republic, Chad Chile, China, Congo, Croatia Cyprus, Czechia, Côte d'Ivoire Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, El Salvador Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland France, Gambia, Ghana Greece, Grenada, Guatemala Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana Haiti, Honduras, Hungary Iceland, India*, Iraq, Ireland Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Palau, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Spain, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States of America, Uruguay, Zambia, Zimbabwe, eSwatini
World Bank, State of Social Safety Nets 2018	SSSN	5	Costa Rica, Mauritius, Morocco State of Palestine, Turkey
State of School Feeding Worldwide 2013	SSFW	3	Canada, China Hong Kong SAR Iran (Islamic Republic of)
WFP, Smart School Meals 2017	SSM	5	Bolivia (Plurinational State of) Cuba Dominican Republic Nicaragua Paraguay
WFP, Annual Country Reports 2019	WFP ACR	6	Algeria Djibouti Jordan Lebanon Myanmar Yemen
Other sources: government reports, case studies and individual country publications	OS	4	Japan Russian Federation Rwanda United Kingdom
Estimations	Est.	18	Afghanistan Albania Bahrain Belarus Bermuda Dem. People's Republic of Korea Dominica Marshall Islands Pakistan Puerto Rico Qatar Saudi Arabia Seychelles Singapore Tonga Ukraine Uzbekistan Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)