Early exposure to universal free meals improves school attendance, study shows

A new study authored by researchers with Syracuse University’s Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health showed that early student exposure to universal free meals improves school attendance.

The study looked at 132,353 New York City kindergarten students from 2009 to 2017 and followed them through third grade. It found that kindergarten students who received universal free meals at school had 1% higher attendance than their peers who didn’t receive free meals. Chronic absenteeism was also 5.4% lower in students who received free meals compared to their peers who didn’t.

These disparities persisted through third grade, but shrank over time, according to the study.

Many states are looking at implementing universal free meals after the U.S. Department of Agriculture waivers that allowed schools across the country to offer free meals to all students expired last summer.

See which states currently offer universal free meals via the map below: