Obesity and Diabetes, the Built Environment, and the 'Local' Food Economy

Matthew Salois

No 103649, 2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Obesity and diabetes are increasingly attributed to environmental factors, however, little attention has been paid to the influence of the ‘local’ food economy. This paper examines the association of measures relating to the built environment and ‘local’ agriculture with U.S. county-level prevalence of obesity and diabetes. Key indicators of the ‘local’ food economy include the density of farmers’ markets and the presence of farms with direct sales. This paper employs a robust regression estimator to account for non-normality of the data and to accommodate outliers. Overall, the built environment is associated with the prevalence of obesity and diabetes and a strong 'local' food economy may play an important role in prevention. Results imply considerable scope for community-level interventions.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Health Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Obesity and Diabetes, the Built Environment, and the ‘Local’ Food Economy (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea11:103649

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.103649

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