Obesity: An unitended consequence of taxes and the gender wage gap?

Adrian Peralta-Alva () and Pedro Gomis-Porqueras

Macroeconomics from EconWPA

Abstract: We perform a dynamic general equilibrium analysis of the observed increase in the weight of the average American adult over the 1960-2005 period. Existing evidence suggests that this fifteen pound increase in weight can be attributed to the dramatic raise in the consumption of foods prepared away from home, which resulted in higher caloric intake. We evaluate the impact of the observed trends in taxes and in the gender wage gap on the caloric intake, food composition and time use of American adults, by gender and marital status. Surprisingly, we find that lower taxes and gender wage gap can account for more than two thirds of the changes in calories consumed and food composition observed in the data. Our general equilibrium analysis can also account for some of the observed movements in time devoted to market and food preparation activities, and reconciles the simultaneous increase in price and consumption of foods prepared away from home.

Keywords: Obesity; Price per calorie; Gender wage gap; Taxes; Technological change; general equilibrium; price of food; relative price of food (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-mac and nep-pbe
Date: 2005-03-17, Revised 2006-04-05
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 19
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:0503014

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