A atuação de nutricionistas no PNAE e seus efeitos sobre o desempenho escolar ^♦

Abstract

Food insecurity can damage children’s intellectual development, negatively affecting student achievement. One of the ways to reduce child food insecurity is through school feeding. In this sense, this study analyzed the effect of the operation of nutrition professionals in schools of the National School Feeding Program (PNAE), as a way to promote healthy eating, on student achievement, measured by the tests scores of 5th grade students in the 2019 SAEB (Sistema de Avaliação da Educação Básica) exam. To do so, the Local Average Treatment Effects (LATE) approach was used, since there is endogeneity in the program component. The results were positive, showing that the presence of nutritionists increases, on average, 12.3 and 36.84 points in the scores of Portuguese and Math tests, respectively. In general, the evidence found contributes to show the importance of the PNAE and the role of the nutritionist in students’ achievement, since this professional promotes healthy school meals and can contribute to children’s cognitive development. An important result was the greater impact of the work of PNAE nutritionists on students with a lower socioeconomic level, suggesting that it generated greater gains for the more vulnerable socioeconomic class of the student population.

Keywords
Students’ achievement; School food; PNAE; Local average treatment effects