RETAIL FOOD PRICES, SHOPPING BEHAVIOR, HEALTH, AND THE FOOD ENVIRONMENT

Chronic health problems, such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease have become major health concerns in the United States in recent decades. Twenty percent of adults in the U.S. currently have heart disease, and 25% have hypertension (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)). According to National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), more than one-third of U.S. adults, and one-sixth of children aged 2-19 were obese in 2010. A staggering one in three children born today will develop diabetes in their lifetime (CDC, 2010).Uncountable medical and health studies strongly link diet to these chronic health problems. In the key recommendations listed in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 2010, the USDA and FDA suggest that people in the U.S. should increase intake of whole grain, dietary fiber, and reduce consumption of refined grains (USDA/FDA, 2010). In response to the maturation and findings of medical, nutritional, and epidemiological, medical associations and policy institutions have reversed their positions with respect to recommendations of dietary fatty acid intake. The formerly accepted fat hypothesis--dietary fat causes metabolic syndrome--as opposed to the carbohydrate hypothesis, has been roundly rejected by the scientific community (Taubes, 2007). The Harvard School of Public Health prominently avers, 'It's time to end the low-fat myth.' Despite this broad and deep knowledge linking food, diet, and health, and the accompanying recommendations, obesity and other poor health outcomes continue to affect a growing number of Americans. Diet choice accounts for 1.4 million preventable American deaths per year.In summary, despite the advantage of nutritional and medical knowledge far advanced of that available just decades ago, children born today in the U.S. have a lower life expectancy than their parents, in large part due to less healthful diets. Why is there such a large disconnect between consumer food choice and dietary recommendations? What policy instruments will be most effective in facilitating preferable health outcomes? In short, what is motivating consumers to make unhealthful food choices, and what will it take get Americans to eat better?A wide range of current research focuses on the hypothesis that health outcomes (including obesity rates) are mediated by the economics of food choice. To be clear, a wide range of interrelated economic and demographic factors are believed to affect consumers' food decisions, including prices, product offerings, marketing signals, the retail-level food environment, community-level attributes, and socio-economic characteristics of the individual households. The advent of micro-level data on food purchase behavior, often linked to information on consumers' demographics and the surrounding food environment, has enabled substantial economic and social science research on many of these interrelated factors. This project will leverage household-level food purchase data to investigate how consumers and food retailers interact in the market place, how these interactions are affected by socioeconomic factors, and how these interactions are related to consumer health.