Food Insecurity, Poverty, Unemployment and Obesity in the United States: Effect of (Not) Considering Back-Door Paths in Policy Modeling

Senarath Dharmasena and David Bessler ()

No 266569, 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida from Southern Agricultural Economics Association

Abstract: The causes and consequences of food environment factors such as food insecurity, poverty, unemployment and obesity in the United States are complex. Once causality patterns with regards to these variables are identified, it is important to recognize front-door (Pearl, 2000) and back-door paths (Pearl, 2000) associated with these variables to make sensible and credible policy decisions. These policy interventions are known as performing do-Calculus (Pearl 2000, Spirtes et al., 2000) in causality literature. In this study we use the complex interactions of four food environment variables in the United States (food insecurity, poverty, unemployment and obesity) estimated using artificial intelligence and directed acyclic graphs by Dharmasena, Bessler and Capps (2016) and perform several policy interventions, recognizing front-door and back-door paths. Such policy simulations are vital for agencies not only to design appropriate policies for food assistance, poverty alleviation, combating food insecurity and obesity, but also to recognize effects of policy prior to the desired intervention. Preliminary analysis shows that there are two front-door paths from income to food insecurity, via poverty and via unemployment. Also, there is a front-door path from poverty to food insecurity, while there is an important back- door path from poverty to food insecurity via unemployment.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; Health Economics and Policy; Research Methods/Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-01-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-big and nep-pke
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/266569/files/D ... liminary%20paper.pdf (application/pdf)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/266569/files/D ... r.pdf?subformat=pdfa (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:saea18:266569

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.266569

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida from Southern Agricultural Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().