Nutrition Inequality: The Role of Prices, Income, and Preferences

Noriko Amano-Patino

No 453, 2018 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: In the U.S., lower income households have a less healthy consumption basket than higher income ones. This paper studies the drivers of such nutrition inequality. I use longitudinal home-scanner data to estimate a demand system on food products, and measure the contribution of prices, disposable income and preferences to nutrition inequality. Disposable income and preferences have a predominant and quantitatively similar role in explaining consumption basket differences across income groups. Instead, prices have a limited effect. Further, I merge nutritional label information to assess, through a series of counterfactual exercises, the effect of income subsidies on nutrition quality. For example, I show that increasing the budget of a low-income household to the average level of the higher income households (a 45% increase in food expenditures) leads to an increase in protein consumption of approximately 5% and a decrease in sugar consumption of approximately 10%.

Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
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Working Paper: Nutritional Inequality: The Role of Prices, Income, and Preferences (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed018:453

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