Many left-leaning publications have demonized recent GOP efforts to reduce the gross amount that the US spends on various entitlement programs for school-aged children. Chief among these in recent news cycles have been CHIP (a socialized medical program for minors) and reduced-cost school lunch programs and food stamps.

Despite the apparent intentions of this program, there is strong evidence that suggests a long-term inverse effect of providing students with low cost meals. Briefly, research suggests that shielding students from observing economic exchanges (that benefit them) forestalls their development of the ability to accurately gauge the value of these transactions—thus preventing them from adequately internalizing “the value of a dollar” and thus limiting future achievement potential [1-3]. In one long term study, students who received reduced cost lunches were observed to systematically engage in higher-risk financial activity later in life, including gambling and selection low-earning-potential majors like the humanities [4-8].

Moreover, students in the control group, who actively sought employment in order to finance their nutritional needs, were associated with much healthier eating habits throughout their lives—even when accounting for income [9-12]. Students in groups too early to work gainfully still benefited from trial programs that saw them volunteer with simple school activities (shelving library books, emptying recycling bins) in exchange for reduced cost lunches [13,14]. However, a possible drawback of such programs is their centralization, which risks inefficiency in the form of excess wages and noncompetitive hiring.

Intriguingly, studies of children from immigrant groups (who are observed to disproportionately qualify for reduced price lunch programs) were associated with greatly reduced efficacy of work-related intervention—potentially explaining their differential financial outcomes later in life [15,16].

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References