The National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program are central parts of a national policy designed to safeguard the nutritional well-being of the Nation’s children. Despite the progress that has been achieved over the years in enhancing the quality of school meals, results of research conducted in the early 1990s indicated that school meals, on balance, were not meeting certain key nutritional goals. 

The NSLP offers free and reduced-price school meals to students from eligible households. Households with incomes at or below 130 percent of poverty are eligible for free meals, and households with incomes between 131 percent and 185 percent of poverty are eligible for reduced-price meals. Traditionally, to receive these benefits, households had to complete and submit application forms to schools or be directly certified. Direct certification, on the other hand, is a method of eligibility determination that does not require families to complete school meal applications. Instead, school officials use documentation from the local or state welfare agency that indicates that a household participates in AFDC or food stamps as the basis for certifying students for free school meals.

This report details the findings of a two-year evaluation of SCCAP, from October 1995 through October 1997.

This report presents an overview of biometric identification technology with particular attention to its potential use to improve the integrity of the FSP. It briefly describes some of the major technologies, summarizes their capabilities, gives examples of applications, and discusses issues that should be considered in evaluating biometric identification technology. 

This report provides an overview of the experience of nine States with biometric identification technologies as of September 1999 and discusses some of the major policy and operational issues encountered during implementation and testing. The report also synthesizes available information on the effectiveness of the technology in reducing duplicate participation and provides a discussion of measurement complexities and issues on the horizon as use of the technology continues to expand. A companion report contains an overview of biometric identification technology, examining the functional capabilities, performance, and applications of the various technologies with a particular focus on finger imaging, the most commonly used and well known.

Less than one-half of working households and less than two-fifths of elderly households that are thought to be eligible for food stamps actually received them in 1994. One way of increasing our understanding of the reasons for these low rates of participation in the Food Stamp Program (FSP) would be to conduct a national survey of nonparticipants who are eligible for the program. Because such a survey would have to overcome conceptual and operational challenges, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. to design and test a survey of the reasons for nonparticipation among low-income working and elderly households. This report discusses our experiences conducting a pretest of this survey and our recommendations for the design and fielding of a larger national survey about the reasons for nonparticipation in the FSP.

This report responds to PL 105-379, which mandated the USDA  examine options for the design, development, implementation and operation of a national database to track participation in federal means-tested public assistance programs.

This report examines data from the Current Population Survey in order to analyze trends in free and reduced price certification and participation in the National School Lunch Program during the period of 1993-1997. The data indicate that free certifications for NSLP as a percentage of CPS estimated eligibles have been increasing for several years and was 118% in 1997 (latest available). 

In the past, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) has relied on a series of large surveys to gather and compare information on food expenditures and food consumption among participants and non-participants to better understand the impacts of the Food Stamp Program (FSP) on the diet and nutritional status of program participants. Studies based on survey data, however, have a number of drawbacks, including the time and expense of collecting the survey data, sampling error, response bias, errors in respondent recall, and misinformation about what may have been purchased or consumed.

This report represents the final evaluation of 26 research demonstration projects authorized under PL 101-264, entitled the "Food, Agriculture, Conservation and Trade Act" of 1990.