This paper assesses whether school lunches contribute to childhood obesity. I employ two methods to isolate the causal impact of school lunches on obesity. First, using panel data, I ?nd that children who consume school lunches are more likely to be obese than those who brown bag their lunches even though they enter kindergarten with the same…

Given the recent rise in childhood obesity, the School Breakfast Program (SBP) and National School Lunch Program (NSLP) have received renewed attention. Using panel data on more than 13,500 primary school students, we assess the relationship between SBP and NSLP participation and (relatively) long-run measures of child weight. After documenting a…