Diabetes and Diet: Purchasing Behavior Change in Response to Health Information

Emily Oster

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2018, vol. 10, issue 4, 308-48

Abstract: Individuals with obesity and related conditions are often reluctant to change their diet. Evaluating the details of this reluctance is hampered by limited data. I use household scanner data to estimate food purchase response to a diagnosis of diabetes. I use a machine learning approach to infer diagnosis from purchases of diabetes-related products. On average, households show significant, but relatively small, calorie reductions. These reductions are concentrated in unhealthy foods, suggesting they reflect real efforts to improve diet. There is some heterogeneity in calorie changes across households, although this heterogeneity is not well predicted by demographics or baseline diet, despite large correlations between these factors and diagnosis. I suggest a theory of behavior change which may explain the limited overall change and the fact that heterogeneity is not predictable.

JEL-codes: D12 D83 D91 I12 M31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.20160232
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20160232 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=7988 (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... XLW5BooYFFGSaiJiJgMF (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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:aea:aejapp:v:10:y:2018:i:4:p:308-48

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().