Evaluating the South African National School Nutrition Programme

This paper examines the effects of the South African National School Nutrition Programme on nutritional outcomes using a regression discontinuity design applied to the first wave of the National Income Dynamic Study. There is tentative evidence to suggest that the programme has a positive effect on weight-for- age and BMI-for-age z-scores, but data constraints necessitating the employment of a proxy selection variable and potentially unobserved discontinuity in other variables around the cut-off call into question the validity of the identification strategy. As such, these results should be interpreted with caution. The paper also serves to communicate ideas for identification strategies and estimation techniques that are conditional on the imminent release of new data.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

School of Economics

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Montgomery, Alex

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Delavallade, Clara

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/11349

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/11349