Universal Free Meals and School Suspension Rates in U.S. Public Schools

This replication package provides data and code for a study evaluating the causal effect of universal free meal programs on out-of-school suspensions in U.S. public schools. The analysis uses a difference-in-differences design to exploit staggered adoption of provisions like the Community Eligibility Provision.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between adoption of universal free meal provisions and changes in suspension rates for elementary, middle, and high schools.
• Examine how the impact of universal meal programs varies based on pre-adoption rates of student eligibility for free and reduced-price meals.
• Replicate the study's difference-in-differences analysis on staggered program adoption using the provided data and code.

Strengths

• Data supports a published causal analysis using a difference-in-differences research design.
• The study specifically analyzes impacts segmented by school level (elementary vs. middle/high).

Limitations

• The dataset scope is limited to U.S. public schools that adopted specific federal meal provisions.
• Specific data dimensions like row count, column names, and file formats are not provided in the input.

Provenance

Source

ICPSR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Replication data and code for a published academic study.

Freshness

The replication package was last updated in February 2026.

Geography

United States, with the smallest geographic unit being schools.