The most recent figures show that 16 percent of children aged 6-11 are obese – almost twice the rate of overweight in the early 1980s. Although there are few straightforward policy tools to combat the high level of obesity, almost two thirds of school children eat a National School Lunch...

This paper investigates how accountability pressures under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) may affect children's rate of overweight. Schools facing increased pressures to produce academic outcomes may reallocate their efforts in ways that have unintended consequences for children's health. For...

The Earned Income Tax Credit is unique among social programs in that benefits are not paid out evenly across the calendar year. We exploit this feature of the EITC to investigate how the credit influences the food expenditure patterns of eligible households. We find that eligible households...