TY - JOUR AU - Bhattacharya,Jayanta AU - DeLeire,Thomas AU - Haider,Steven AU - Currie,Janet TI - Heat or Eat? Cold Weather Shocks and Nutrition in Poor American Families JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 9004 PY - 2002 Y2 - June 2002 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9004 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9004.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Thomas DeLeire La Follette School of Public Affairs University of Wisconsin - Madison 1225 Observatory Drive Madison, WI 53706 E-Mail: tdeleire@lafollette.wisc.edu Steven J. Haider Department of Economics Michigan State University 101 Marshall Hall East Lansing, MI 48824 Tel: 517/355-1860 Fax: 517/432-1068 E-Mail: haider@msu.edu Janet Currie International Affairs Building Department of Economics Columbia University - Mail code 3308 420 W 118th Street New York, NY 10027 Tel: 212/854-4520 Fax: 212/854-8059 E-Mail: jc2663@columbia.edu AB - We examine the effects of cold weather periods on family budgets and on nutritional outcomes in poor American families. Expenditures on food and home fuels are tracked by linking the Consumer Expenditure Survey to temperature data. Using the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we track calorie consumption, dietary quality, vitamin deficiencies, and anemia in summer and winter months. We find that both rich and poor families increase fuel expenditures in response to unusually cold weather (a 10 degree F drop below normal). At same time, poor families reduce food expenditures by roughly the same amount as the increase in fuel expenditures, while rich families increase food expenditures. Poor adults and children reduce caloric intake by roughly 200 calories during winter months, unlike richer adults and children. In sensitivity analyses, we find that decreases in food expenditure are most pronounced outside the South. We conclude that poor parents and their children outside the South spend and eat less food during cold weather temperature shocks. We surmise that existing social programs fail to buffer against these shocks. ER -