Does Food Consumption Away From Home Make You Happier? An Empirical Investigation of the Elderly in Taiwan

Hung-Hao Chang

No 149927, 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Due to the increased share of food consumption away from (FAFH) on overall household food expenditure, a considerable body of literature has examined the impacts of FAFH on diet quality and physical health. A conventional wisdom is that FAFH is associated with poor diet quality, and it also increases the likelihood of being overweight. However, not much attention has been paid to the association between FAFH and mental health of the individual. Since mental health is as important as physical health, a better understanding of the effect of FAFH on mental health is crucial for policy making. This study contributes to this knowledge gap by assessing the causal effect of FAFH on elderly depression using a national representative dataset of elderly in Taiwan. Results indicate that elderly who consumed food away from home is more likely to be depressed by 34% compared to their counterparts of FAFH non-participants, after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics and other factors.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2013-08-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/149927/files/Draft_AAEA-2013.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:aaea13:149927

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.149927

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().