About me

I am a PhD student and research fellow at the Department of Economics at the Universitat de Girona working under the supervision of Sara Ayllón. I am also a member of the research group Economics of Inequality and Poverty Analysis (EQUALITAS).

My research interests include poverty, inequality, applied microeconomics, public policy evaluation, labour economics and public economics. As part of my doctoral thesis, I am currently examining the impact of school meals on children’s outcomes within the framework of the SCHOOL_MEALS project (further details are available on the project webpage). Additionally, I am investigating how free school meals influence parental labour market outcomes.

Work in progress

Universal free school meals and work incentives: lessons from England.

• This paper analyses the effects of a transition from a means-tested to a universal school-meal programme on parental labour market outcomes. Using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, we document that the introduction of the Universal Infant Free School Meals (UIFSM) policy increased labour supply and reduced inactivity rates among mothers whose children were eligible, compared to when the same children were older, ineligible and required to meet eligibility criteria to receive free school meals. The effects are particularly pronounced for single mothers, those in households where the father is employed and those whose children were previously eligible under the means-tested scheme. In contrast, no significant effects are observed for fathers. Our findings suggest that the policy strengthens work incentives by removing the risk of losing access to free school meals when mothers enter employment.

The causal impact of school-meal programmes on children in developed economies: A meta-analysis (with Sara Ayllón).

• This paper is the first to meta-analyse the literature on the causal effects of school-meal programmes on children’s behavioural, health and educational outcomes in developed countries, while addressing potential publication bias and heterogeneity between studies. We create a sample of 2,821 estimates from 42 studies and gather 59 aspects reflecting the context in which each estimate was obtained, including type of data, programme characteristics, student population, estimation method and publication quality, among others. We employ both linear and non-linear techniques to correct for publication bias and we use Bayesian Model Averaging to study heterogeneous effects and address model uncertainty. The results are consistent with a modest publication bias, primarily concentrated among studies focused on the educational domain. Once this bias is accounted for, we find that school-meal programmes in high-income economies have minimal impact on students’ health and educational outcomes. In contrast, we observe small positive effects in the behavioural domain, although the effect size is negligible. Our heterogeneity analysis documents that means-tested and school-breakfast initiatives yield the greatest benefits for children’s outcomes.

Teleworking and childcare across Europe: Is there a childcare digital divide? (with Sara Ayllón, Pablo Brugarolas and Enza Simeone).

Contact information

samuel.lado@udg.edu

Department of Economics, Universitat de Girona

C/Universitat de Girona, 10

17003 Girona, Spain