Submitted Article Participation Trends for Full Price Meals in the National School Lunch Program Gregory Golino * , Katherine Ralston, and Joanne Guthrie Gregory Golino is a graduate teaching assistant at the Department of Economics at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA. Katherine Ralston is a senior agricultural economist at the Economic Research Service at the US Department of Agriculture, Washington DC. Joanne Guthrie is a nutritionist at the Economic Research Service at the US Department of Agriculture.Editor in charge: Craig Gundersen *Correspondence may be sent to: E-mail: ggolino@gmu.edu Submitted 00 Month 2020; editorial decision 30 June 2020. Abstract Participation in USDA’s National School Lunch Program has declined since 2011, driven by fewer full-price lunch purchases among students not eligible for free or reduced-price meals. Potential explanations include meal price increases for paying students and updated nutrition standards for meals following implemen- tation of the Healthy Hunger-Free Child Act, as well as macroeconomic factors. Lon- gitudinal analyses of full-price lunch participation at the state and local levels indicate household income and employment trends were significantly associated with participation trends, but lunch price increases and challenges some localities experi- enced implementing new nutrition standards may have played a role as well. Key words: School lunch, National School Lunch Program, Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, Special Nutrition Program Operations Study, Participation rates. JEL codes: H51, H52, Q18. Introduction On a typical school day in 2018, almost 30 million lunches were served to school children as part of the National Student Lunch Program (NSLP) (Oliveira 2019). The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sets nutritional standards for NSLP lunches and provides subsidies to the local school food authorities (SFAs, usually a unit of the school district) to reimburse the SFA for meals provided free or at a reduced price to students from low-income households. Other students are charged a price set by their local school dis- trict, commonly referred to as “full price” or “paid,” although these meals also receive a smaller subsidy from USDA (FNS, 2019). In an effort to improve the nutritional content of student lunches, USDA requested guidance from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which suggested updates to the meal © 2020 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy (2020) volume 00, number 00, pp. 1–15. doi:10.1002/aepp.13071 1