Rural Economy-wide Impacts of Kenya’s Home-Grown School Meals Program

Abstract

School feeding programs can generate significant economic benefits in rural areas when schools purchase food from local producers, producer associations, or traders, who in turn source food locally or from other parts of the country. Utilizing primary survey data on schools, households, businesses, and traders across five representative counties in Kenya, we estimate the economy-wide impacts of Kenya’s Home-Grown School Meals Program (HGSMP). Our applied general equilibrium model integrates local economies of both HGSMP and high-productivity (HP) food-source counties to estimate direct and indirect spillover effects. Every Kenyan shilling (KSH) allocated to HGSMP schools generates an additional 1.02 KSH of inflation-adjusted income within HGSMP counties and 0.24 KSH in HP counties, leading to a total inflation-adjusted income multiplier of 2.26 in the local economy. On average, each additional school covered by HGSMP has the potential to generate KSH 1.43 million in annual income in Kenya’s rural economy, substantially exceeding the cost of feeding the school. This study highlights that school feeding programs not only improve children’s human capital outcomes but also create economic benefits for rural economies.