Akin, John S., David K. Guilkey, Barry M. Popkin, and James H. Wyckoff. 1983. "The Demand for School Lunches: An Analysis of Individual Participation in the School Lunch Program." Journal of Human Resources 18(2):213-230.

In this paper we analyze participation in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) using a basic neoclassical demand model. This statistical analysis incorporates nutrient consumption from nonlunch sources to control explicitly for tastes. Because the dependent variable takes only four values, the ordered pro bit estimation technique is used. The insights gained concerning the effects of tastes, the size of the Food Stamp program bonus, and the price of the school lunch, among others, should prove useful in designing future NSLP policies.

The authors are faculty members at the University of North Carolina. Chapel Hill. and are affiliated with the Carolina Population Center.
We wish to thank Jeff Bass and Pamela Haines for their assistance in various phases of the preparation of this paper. The research was funded by the Consumer Nutrition Center, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Betty Peterkin and Robert Rizek, director and deputy director of the Consumer Nutrition Center, are thanked for their assistance. We received helpful comments when this paper was presented at USDA. Anonymous referees of this journal are thanked for their help. The authors, listed alphabetically, contributed equally to this publication.

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US ISSN 0022-166X

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