TY  - JOUR
AU  - Goldman,Dana
AU  - Lakdawalla,Darius
AU  - Zheng,Yuhui
TI  - Food Prices and the Dynamics of Body Weight
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15096
PY  - 2009
Y2  - June 2009
DO  - 10.3386/w15096
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15096
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15096.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Dana Goldman
Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics
University of Southern California
635 Downey Way
Los Angeles, CA 90089-3333
Tel: (213) 821-7948
Fax: (213) 740-3460
E-Mail: dpgoldma@usc.edu

Darius N. Lakdawalla
University of Southern California
635 Downey Way, VPD 414-K
Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics
Los Angeles, CA 90089-7273
Tel: 213/740-6012
E-Mail: dlakdawa@usc.edu

Yuhui Zheng
RAND Corporation
E-Mail: yuzheng@hsph.harvard.edu
M1  - published as Dana Goldman, Darius Lakdawalla, Yuhui Zheng. "Food Prices and the Dynamics of Body Weight," in Michael Grossman and Naci H. Mocan, editors, "Economic Aspects of Obesity" University of Chicago Press (2011)

M3  - presented at "Economic Aspects of Obesity", November 10-11, 2008
AB  - A popular policy option for addressing the growth in weight has has been the imposition of a "fat tax" on selected foods that are deemed to promote obesity.  Understanding the public economics of "fat taxes" requires an understanding of how or even whether individuals respond to changes in food prices over the long-term.  We study the short- and long-run body weight consequences of changing food prices, in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).  We found very modest short-term effects of price per calorie on body weight, and the magnitudes align with the previous literature.  The long-term effect is much bigger, but it takes a long time for the effect to reach the full scale. Within 30 years, a 10% permanent reduction in price per calorie would lead to a BMI increase of 1.5 units (or 3.6%). The long term effect is an increase of 1.9 units of BMI (or 4.2%).  From a policy perspective, these results suggest that policies raising the price of calories will have little effect on weight in the short term, but might curb the rate of weight growth and achieve weight reduction over a very long period of time.
ER  -