The World Bank

Food for education (FFE) programs, including free or subsidized on-site school feeding programs (SFP) and take-home rations conditional on school attendance (THR), are often used to improve school attendance, but the ultimate goal is to improve student learning. Improving the nutrition of malnourished students while they learn may also improve cognitive function. This paper presents evidence from a randomized prospective field experiment conducted in Northern Uganda from 2005-2007 on the impacts of alternative primary school FFE programs on learning and cognitive development. The evaluation compares outcomes between three randomly assigned groups: beneficiaries of World Food Programme’s SFP program, beneficiaries of an experimental THR program giving equivalent food transfers, and a control group. Learning achievement is measured by math and literacy test scores and by results of the national Primary Leaving Exam (PLE). Cognitive development is assessed using the Ravens Colored Progressive Matrices and two forms of the Digit Span test. The sample is drawn from Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps in Northern Uganda formed between 1997-2003 in response to the killings and abductions brought on by the ongoing Lord's Resistance Army insurgency. We present results of several alternative treatment effect estimators which provide conservative ‘intent to treat ’ measures of program impact. Our preferred estimates for these data are those from a treatment group difference-in-differences model. Results show that neither progra