To be fair to our politicians regards the controversies swirling over the quality and reliability of school lunches, the guilty party which started the fiasco was certainly not Labour, nor National, nor ACT. It was NZ Treasury false and misleading "advice".
Midway through 2023, just before Labour lost office, Radio NZ headlines blared, "Treasury does not support free school lunches .. Finance Minister Robertson said evaluations showed the program had no effect on attendance & provided little benefit for Māori students .. Evaluations found no impact on attendance & ākonga Māori, who make up 48 percent of students receiving the program, have not benefited on most metrics, such as paying attention in class, health, and mental wellbeing (with mental wellbeing worse off for those in the program)."
Identifying the causal impact of quality school lunches on such outcomes is a very difficult econometric problem. It has been the subject of international studies & debates for nearly 100 years. School meal programs were introduced in America by President Truman in 1946. Working out their effect has been fraught since its usually poor, disadvantaged children who've been selected for the programs. Consequently should you correlate the likes of school attendance, grades, obesity and those kinds of outcomes on participation in lunch programs, it may even appear that such programs are associated with worse outcomes.
Identifying the causal impact of quality school lunches on such outcomes is a very difficult econometric problem. It has been the subject of international studies & debates for nearly 100 years. School meal programs were introduced in America by President Truman in 1946. Working out their effect has been fraught since its usually poor, disadvantaged children who've been selected for the programs. Consequently should you correlate the likes of school attendance, grades, obesity and those kinds of outcomes on participation in lunch programs, it may even appear that such programs are associated with worse outcomes.
The problem is so hard that modern attempts to work out whether meal programs are worthwhile have titles like, "The impact of the National School Lunch Program on Child Health: A nonparametric bounds analysis" which is in the highly regarded Journal of Econometrics. That article starts out by saying, "Children [partaking in] the National School Lunch Program tend to have worse health outcomes on average than children who do not participate .. Whether [this] reflects causal impacts of the program has become a matter of considerable debate among researchers and policymakers". Even that paper's findings are somewhat ambiguous.
My view is that it was a mistake for the NZ Treasury to pretend it had worked out the effect of quality school lunches on children's educational & health outcomes, when no-one else in the world has done so. It should've never stated that across a range of metrics, there are no effects. Just because Treasury, using a wonky statistical methodology, could not find them, does not mean they do not exist. Instead Treasury should've backed off making any assertions, and been modest. The Treasury threw NZ's debate on school lunches into chaos. All we know for certain is that healthy public school lunch programs are intensely political.
Just last week US Republicans in Congress took aim at ending meal programs that provide funding for schools to buy healthy food from local farmers. Such programs had been championed by Michelle Obama, former President Obama's wife, when he was in office. Treasury should have had the honesty to say that it had no clue whether providing high quality lunches would turn out to be - over the next 50 years - a "social investment" that would improve the outcomes for children who ate them. The Treasury never had the data.
Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
Can someone please tell me what an akonga is. I do not speak pidgin maori , or wish to .
Akonga are kids at school. They used to be called pupils then students . Changes of names but no improvement in teaching.
This issue of school lunches is getting annoying . Our educational standards have declined horribly because we have an iniquitous education system with ineffective teaching methods , poor discipline, no work ethic, no morality and no teaching of knowledge . This is the primary issue we need to be addressing in schools.
One meal of butter chicken per day is not going to improve our shocking educational standards. Junk food in Western society is certainly a big issue but it is a health education not an educational one.
Have more nutrition programmes in all areas of health, especially medical schools. Tax sugar , have posters in health centers that illustrate wrong choices. of food and life style. Have disincentives for fast food outlets in low decile areas. Replace the 'equity ' posters in health centers with nutritional advice making fresh fruit and vege looking more appetizing than fries and booze. . Stop advertising junk food on children's TV.
Our schooling system is a complete fiasco hence don't confound the issue of education with health issues as well . Get lunches out of schools and into the wider community in 'health 'centers.
This issue draws attention to the need to conduct proper quantitative studies when using empirical data to devise social policy. A lot of simplistic thinking based on simple descriptive stats underpins much social policy (usually the policy came before the data anyway and the data supposedly justify the policy). All enacted social policy needs to be properly monitored. Most people equate stats with lots of percentages but wouldn't recognise inferential stats with all their weird symbols and esoteric jargon if they tripped over them. But for goodness' sake make use of that expertise when applying the principle of evidence-based policy.
From my observations we appear to have obesity issues more than hunger, notwithstanding the reality of genuine poverty and the challenges that accompany it.
The school lunch programme has now twisted and turned into a media-driven circus quite frankly.
It may improve given a chance, but if the whinging and staged ‘news items’ continue I suggest that the govt call a halt, and engage with affected schools so that genuine hardship can be identified and local efforts arranged and assisted as needed…but no open cheque book either (looking at you Labour).
As an aside, the constant playing of fast food ads on local tv channels won’t be helping, but no one is forced into those junk food outlets either.
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