Getting a healthy start: The effectiveness of targeted benefits for improving dietary choices

Rachel Griffith, Stephanie von Hinke and Sarah Smith

Journal of Health Economics, 2018, vol. 58, issue C, 176-187

Abstract: There is growing policy interest in encouraging better dietary choices. We study a nationally-implemented policy – the UK Healthy Start scheme – that introduced vouchers for fruit, vegetables and milk. We show that the policy has increased spending on fruit and vegetables and has been more effective than an equivalent-value cash benefit. We also show that the policy improved the nutrient composition of households' shopping baskets, with no offsetting changes in spending on other foodstuffs.

Keywords: Dietary choices; Targeted benefits; Healthy Start scheme (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629616302533
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Getting a healthy start: The effectiveness of targeted benefits for improving dietary choices (2015)
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:eee:jhecon:v:58:y:2018:i:c:p:176-187

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2018.02.009

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().