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Individual Taste or Collective Decision? Public Policy on School Meals*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Richard Rose  and
Peter Falconer
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Abstract

School meals today are provided on a compromise basis; some pupils are charged and others are not. The compromise thus rejects two types of universalistic principles: allocating private benefits by the market and provision of merit goods collectively free of charge. The article examines, empirically and conceptually, the changing meaning of school meals; the demand and supply of school meals and the allocation of public subsidies to non-needy children; conflicting goals of expert nutritionists, egalitarians, redistributionists, efficient managers, and parents and children. The article concludes by considering political constraints on rationalising the programme in the name of universalistic principles. These constraints include the inheritance of commitments from previous governments, collective responsibility of spending and Treasury ministers; intra-party divisions between frontbench and backbench MPs; and low political salience of charging as an issue.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , July 1992 , pp. 349 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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