CSPS Webinar on "Using the School Feeding Programme as a Social Intervention to Reduce Child Marriage Prevalence Rates in Ghana."

The government of Ghana introduced the school feeding programme in the public basic schools in 2005 as a social intervention programme aimed at improving learning outcomes. Among other things, the programme seeks to enhance food security, reduce hunger in schools and subsequently improve school enrolment rates. Studies assessing the returns of the programme show different outcomes of interest. One of the interesting impacts of the intervention is on child marriage – a key sociocultural problem that affects education attainment in the country. This paper employs a two-stage least squares model on the round seven of the Ghana Living Standard Survey data set to estimate the impact of the school feeding programme on child marriage in Ghana. Using public schools and regional dummies as instrumental variables, it was found that the school feeding programme discourages the incidence of child marriage. The paper recommends that government should prioritise the intensification of the school feeding programme as policy aimed at addressing child marriage prevalence rates in Ghana