Abstract

Background: COVID-19 pandemic led to drastic school dropout and food security declines in 2020. Given the persistent issue, we probe to understand the association between the food security and children educational status.

Objective: The study explores food factors associated with children’s school dropout in low-income households by employing Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) algorithm.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey included 2830 low-income households surveyed in two periods: July-November 2018-19 and December-January 2020-21. The survey conducted from unskilled and semi-skilled employees including drivers, domestic workers, delivery personnels, beauticians, street vendors, small business owners, and self-employed individuals. Face-to-face interviews collected data on economics, jobs, health, food, and emotional distress. We employed a Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) algorithm to investigate food factors associated with children’s school dropout during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, the excited decision tree model is validated using Random Forest algorithm.

Results: the results brought out three noteworthy results. First, the direct effect of government ration support shows as a positive contributor to children to continue education, indicating the important role of the government in fulfil the gap related to lack of access to free school meal and the risk of children school dropout in the lockdowns. Second, the consumption of starch staple positively increased the number of meals consumed per day. Since the Indian food is known as starch dependant, therefore, increasing the starch staple led to consumption of a greater number of meals. Third, in addition to a decomposed effect through starch staples consumption, the number of the meals consumed per day has played an indirect role on a child's educational status through government ration support. Similarly, these results are validated through the Random Forest algorithm.

Conclusion: The findings highlight the role of government ration support in enhancing the consumption of starch staples. Moreover, the importance of availability of three normal meals a day during the pandemic contributes to reduction of children school drop-out. Thus, the optimal redesign of feeding schemes to deliver at least a meal for vulnerable households leverage children education attainment. In light of limited access to food assistance and prevailing food insecurity, it is crucial to enhance the effectiveness and sustained involvement from both government and private sectors in providing free ration schemes.