Investigating the effects of school meals, textbooks, and uniforms on enrolment and attendance: evidence from basic education pupils in Ghana

Access to basic education in Ghana is constrained by nutritional, material, and learning resource constraints. In-school non-cash transfer programmes, providing free meals, uniforms, and textbooks seek to mitigate these constraints, yet most prior studies have examined single interventions in isolation. This study advances the literature by simultaneously evaluating both the individual and combined effects of these supports on enrolment and attendance.. Drawing on nationally representative data from 16,122 school-aged children from the Ghana Living Standards Survey Round Seven, and applying Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment (IPWRA), we estimate average treatment effects (ATE/ATT) for each intervention. Free school meals increase enrolment by approximately 0.4–0.9 percentage points, with standard errors between 0.002 and 0.003, underscoring the role of nutritional support in school entry. Free uniforms raise attendance by 3–4.4 hours per week, with confidence intervals excluding zero, indicating robust effects on regular participation. Free textbooks yield enrolment gains of 0.5–0.8 percentage points and attendance improvements of 2.2–3.9 hours, both statistically significant at the 1–5% level. Combined interventions outperform standalone programmes: meals paired with uniforms generate the largest enrolment gains, while textbooks combined with uniforms produce the greatest attendance improvements. Findings suggest that education policy should prioritise strategically bundled in-kind support, as integrated interventions more effectively reduce multiple barriers to school participation than isolated programmes.