One-Third of Households With Children Paying for School Meals Reported That Doing So Contributed to Financial Hardship

Children typically receive meals through USDA’s National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program for free, at a reduced-price (no more than $0.40 cents for a school lunch and $0.30 cents for a school breakfast), or at full price (generally no more than $3) depending on their household’s income. This changed in response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. To facilitate the continued provision of school meals during pandemic-related disruptions to school operations, USDA issued a waiver allowing schools to serve free meals to all children nationwide, regardless of income. This waiver expired in June 2022. The expiration of USDA’s waiver raised concerns among some advocates and policymakers that charging for school meals would increase financial hardship—defined as difficulty paying for expenses—among families that continued to struggle with the pandemic and its economic fallout, such as rising inflation. A recent USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) study used new data from the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) to document the share of households reporting that paying for school meals contributed to their financial hardship among households with school-aged children who paid for school meals.