The National School Lunch Program: Ensuring that Free and Reduced-Price Meal Benefits Go to the Poor

This new four-page issue brief details two approaches to ensuring that free and reduced-price school meals go to eligible families. The brief finds that direct certification is useful in improving program access, although it could reach more eligible households. However, a pilot program that required free and reduced-price meal benefit applicants to provide income documentation with their applications did not deter ineligible households from applying and being approved for these benefits, and it did reduce access to these benefits among eligible households.