IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eei/rpaper/eeri_rp_2010_40.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Food Prices and Overweight Patterns in Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Luca Pieroni
  • Donatella Lanari
  • Luca Salmasi

Abstract

In this paper we examine the role of relative food prices in determining the recent increase in body weight in Italy. Cross-price elasticities of unhealthy and healthy foods estimated by a demand system provide a consistent framework to evaluate substitution effects, when a close association is assumed between unhealthy (healthy) foods and more (less) energy-dense foods. We used a dataset constructed from a series of cross-sections of the Italian Household Budget Survey (1997-2005) to obtain the variables of the demand system, which accounts for regional price variability. The relative increase of healthy food prices was found to produce nontrivial elasticities of substitution towards higher relative consumption of unhealthy foods, with effects on weight outcomes. In addition, these changes were unevenly distributed among individuals and were particularly significant for those who were poorer and had less education.

Suggested Citation

  • Luca Pieroni & Donatella Lanari & Luca Salmasi, 2010. "Food Prices and Overweight Patterns in Italy," EERI Research Paper Series EERI_RP_2010_40, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels.
  • Handle: RePEc:eei:rpaper:eeri_rp_2010_40
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.eeri.eu/documents/wp/EERI_RP_2010_40.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Shin, Yongcheol & Smith, Richard J., 2000. "Structural analysis of vector error correction models with exogenous I(1) variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 293-343, August.
    2. Ng, Serena, 1995. "Testing for Homogeneity in Demand Systems When the Regressors Are Nonstationary," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(2), pages 147-163, April-Jun.
    3. Guthrie, Joanne F. & Variyam, Jayachandran N., 2007. "Can Food Stamps Do More to Improve Food Choices? An Economic Perspective-Nutrition Information: Can It Improve the Diets of Low-Income Households?," Economic Information Bulletin 59434, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. M. Hashem Pesaran & Yongcheol Shin, 2002. "Long-Run Structural Modelling," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 49-87.
    5. David M. Cutler & Edward L. Glaeser & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2003. "Why Have Americans Become More Obese?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 93-118, Summer.
    6. Lewbel, Arthur, 1996. "Aggregation without Separability: A Generalized Composite Commodity Theorem," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 524-543, June.
    7. Pesaran, M Hashem, 1997. "The Role of Economic Theory in Modelling the Long Run," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(440), pages 178-191, January.
    8. D. Coondoo & A. Majumder & R. Ray, 2004. "A Method of Calculating Regional Consumer Price Differentials with Illustrative Evidence from India," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 50(1), pages 51-68, March.
    9. Barnett, William A. & Serletis, Apostolos, 2008. "Consumer preferences and demand systems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 210-224, December.
    10. Komlos, John & Baur, Marieluise, 2004. "From the tallest to (one of) the fattest: the enigmatic fate of the American population in the 20th century," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 57-74, March.
    11. García Villar, Jaume & Quintana-Domeque, Climent, 2009. "Income and body mass index in Europe," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 73-83, March.
    12. Charles Baum, 2007. "The effects of race, ethnicity, and age on obesity," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 20(3), pages 687-705, July.
    13. Kwiatkowski, Denis & Phillips, Peter C. B. & Schmidt, Peter & Shin, Yongcheol, 1992. "Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root : How sure are we that economic time series have a unit root?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1-3), pages 159-178.
    14. Lakdawalla, Darius & Philipson, Tomas, 2009. "The growth of obesity and technological change," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 283-293, December.
    15. D. Coondoo & A. Majumder & R. Ray, 2001. "On a Method of Calculating Regional Price Differentials with Illustrative Evidence from India," ASARC Working Papers 2001-06, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.
    16. Arthur Lewbel & Serena Ng, 2005. "Demand Systems with Nonstationary Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(3), pages 479-494, August.
    17. Schroeter, Christiane & Lusk, Jayson & Tyner, Wallace, 2008. "Determining the impact of food price and income changes on body weight," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 45-68, January.
    18. Kuchler, Fred & Golan, Elise H. & Variyam, Jayachandran N. & Crutchfield, Stephen R., 2005. "Obesity Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences," Brazilian Journal of Rural Economy and Sociology (RESR), Sociedade Brasileira de Economia e Sociologia Rural, June.
    19. Drewnowski, A. & Darmon, N. & Briend, A., 2004. "Replacing fats and sweets with vegetables and fruits - A question of cost," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 94(9), pages 1555-1559.
    20. Ball, Kylie & Crawford, David, 2005. "Socioeconomic status and weight change in adults: a review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(9), pages 1987-2010, May.
    21. Burkhauser, Richard V. & Cawley, John, 2008. "Beyond BMI: The value of more accurate measures of fatness and obesity in social science research," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 519-529, March.
    22. Fabrice Etilé, 2007. "Social norms, ideal body weight and food attitudes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(9), pages 945-966, September.
    23. Barnett, William A. & Serletis, Apostolos, 2008. "Measuring Consumer Preferences and Estimating Demand Systems," MPRA Paper 12318, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    24. M. Christopher Auld & Lisa M. Powell, 2009. "Economics of Food Energy Density and Adolescent Body Weight," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 76(304), pages 719-740, October.
    25. Elliott, Graham & Rothenberg, Thomas J & Stock, James H, 1996. "Efficient Tests for an Autoregressive Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(4), pages 813-836, July.
    26. Chou, Shin-Yi & Grossman, Michael & Saffer, Henry, 2004. "An economic analysis of adult obesity: results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 565-587, May.
    27. Costa-Font, Joan & Fabbri, Daniele & Gil, Joan, 2009. "Decomposing body mass index gaps between Mediterranean countries: A counterfactual quantile regression analysis," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 351-365, December.
    28. Guthrie, Joanne F. & Frazao, Elizabeth & Andrews, Margaret S. & Smallwood, David M., 2007. "Improving Food Choices—Can Food Stamps Do More?," Amber Waves:The Economics of Food, Farming, Natural Resources, and Rural America, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, pages 1-7, April.
    29. David L. Edgerton, 1997. "Weak Separability and the Estimation of Elasticities in Multistage Demand Systems," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 79(1), pages 62-79.
    30. Muellbauer, John, 1976. "Community Preferences and the Representative Consumer," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(5), pages 979-999, September.
    31. Guthrie, Joanne F. & Lin, Biing-Hwan & Ver Ploeg, Michele & Frazao, Elizabeth, 2007. "Can Food Stamps Do More to Improve Food Choices? An Economic Perspectives--Overview: Can Food Stamps Do More To Improve Food Choices?," Economic Information Bulletin 59422, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    32. Kuchler, Fred & Golan, Elise H. & Variyam, Jayachandran N. & Crutchfield, Stephen R., 2005. "Obesity Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences," Amber Waves:The Economics of Food, Farming, Natural Resources, and Rural America, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, pages 1-8, June.
    33. Johansen, Soren, 1995. "Identifying restrictions of linear equations with applications to simultaneous equations and cointegration," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 111-132, September.
    34. Cranfield, J. A. L. & Pellow, Scott, 2004. "The role of global vs. local negativity in functional form selection: an application to Canadian consumer demands," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 345-360, March.
    35. Zheng, Xiaoyong & Zhen, Chen, 2008. "Healthy food, unhealthy food and obesity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 300-303, August.
    36. Adam Drewnowski & Nicole Darmon, 2005. "Food choices and diet costs: an economic analysis," Post-Print hal-03759740, HAL.
    37. Lin, Biing-Hwan & Guthrie, Joanne F., 2007. "Can Food Stamps Do More to Improve Food Choices? An Economic Perspective-How Do Low-Income Households Respond to Food Prices," Economic Information Bulletin 59432, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    38. Deaton, Angus S & Muellbauer, John, 1980. "An Almost Ideal Demand System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 312-326, June.
    39. Peter G. Kopelman, 2000. "Obesity as a medical problem," Nature, Nature, vol. 404(6778), pages 635-643, April.
    40. Guthrie, Joanne F. & Andrews, Margaret S. & Frazao, Elizabeth & Leibtag, Ephraim S. & Lin, Biing-Hwan & Mancino, Lisa & Nord, Mark & Prell, Mark A. & Smallwood, David M. & Variyam, Jayachandran N. & V, 2007. "Can Food Stamps Do More to Improve Food Choices? An Economic Perspective," Economic Information Bulletin 59417, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    41. Chouinard Hayley H & Davis David E & LaFrance Jeffrey T & Perloff Jeffrey M, 2007. "Fat Taxes: Big Money for Small Change," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 1-30, June.
    42. Clifford Attfield, 2004. "Stochastic Trends, Demographics and Demand Systems," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 04/563, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    43. Andrew Chesher, 1998. "Individual demands from household aggregates: time and age variation in the composition of diet," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(5), pages 505-524.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Papoutsi, Georgia & Nayga, Rodolfo & Lazaridis, Panagiotis & Drichoutis, Andreas, 2013. "Nudging parental health behavior with and without children's pestering power: Fat tax, subsidy or both?," MPRA Paper 52324, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. L. Pieroni & L. Salmasi, 2015. "Does Cigarette Smoking Affect Body Weight? Causal Estimates from the Clean Indoor Air Law Discontinuity," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82(328), pages 671-704, October.
    3. Giorgio d’Agostino & Margherita Scarlato & Silvia Napolitano, 2018. "Do Cash Transfers Promote Food Security? The Case of the South African Child Support Grant," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 27(4), pages 430-456.
    4. Pieroni, L. & Salmasi, L., 2014. "Fast-food consumption and body weight. Evidence from the UK," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 94-105.
    5. Pieroni, Luca & Salmasi, Luca, 2010. "Body weight and socio-economic determinants: quantile estimations from the British Household Panel Survey," ISER Working Paper Series 2010-41, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    6. Giovanni Piumatti, 2020. "Longitudinal Trends in Self-Rated Health During Times of Economic Uncertainty in Italy," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 148(2), pages 599-633, April.
    7. Costa-Font, Joan & Salmasi, Luca & Zaccagni, Sarah, 2021. "More Than a Ban on Smoking? Behavioural Spillovers of Smoking Bans in the Workplace," IZA Discussion Papers 14299, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Rafael Moreira Claro & Vargas Hernandez & Joel Alberto & Satoru Shimokawa & Euna Han & Sharada Keats & Steve Wiggins, 2015. "The Rising Cost of a Healthy Diet – Changing Relative prices of Foods in High- Income and Emerging Economies," Working Papers id:7250, eSocialSciences.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pieroni, Luca, 2009. "Does defence expenditure affect private consumption? Evidence from the United States," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1300-1309, November.
    2. Pieroni, Luca & Salmasi, Luca, 2010. "Body weight and socio-economic determinants: quantile estimations from the British Household Panel Survey," ISER Working Paper Series 2010-41, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    3. Okrent, Abigail M. & Alston, Julian M., 2011. "Demand for Food in the United States: A Review of Literature, Evaluation of Previous Estimates, and Presentation of New Estimates of Demand," Monographs, University of California, Davis, Giannini Foundation, number 251908, December.
    4. Pieroni, L. & Salmasi, L., 2014. "Fast-food consumption and body weight. Evidence from the UK," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 94-105.
    5. Barnett, William A. & Serletis, Apostolos, 2008. "Consumer preferences and demand systems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 210-224, December.
    6. Alston, Julian M. & Mullally, Conner C. & Sumner, Daniel A. & Townsend, Marilyn & Vosti, Stephen A., 2009. "Likely effects on obesity from proposed changes to the US food stamp program," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 176-184, April.
    7. Daouli, Joan & Davillas, Apostolos & Demoussis, Michael & Giannakopoulos, Nicholas, 2013. "The determinants of body mass in Greece: Evidence from the National Health Survey," MPRA Paper 66392, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. McGeary, Kerry Anne, 2013. "The impact of state-level nutrition-education program funding on BMI: Evidence from the behavioral risk factor surveillance system," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 67-78.
    9. Cawley, John, 2015. "An economy of scales: A selective review of obesity's economic causes, consequences, and solutions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 244-268.
    10. Radwan, Amr & Gil, Jose M., 2015. "Can Price Intervention Policies Improve Diet Quality in Spain?," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212698, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    11. Tafreschi, Darjusch, 2015. "The income body weight gradients in the developing economy of China," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 115-134.
    12. Breitung, Jörg & Pesaran, Mohammad Hashem, 2005. "Unit roots and cointegration in panels," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2005,42, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    13. David Aristei & Luca Pieroni, 2005. "Estimating the Role of Government Expenditure in Long-run Consumption," Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia, Finanza e Statistica 13/2005, Università di Perugia, Dipartimento Economia.
    14. Etilé, F, 2008. "Food Price Policies and the Distribution of Body Mass Index: Theory and Empirical Evidence from France," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 08/10, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    15. Céline Bonnet & Pierre Dubois & Valérie Orozco, 2014. "Household food consumption, individual caloric intake and obesity in France," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 1143-1166, May.
    16. Hamermesh, Daniel S., 2010. "Incentives, time use and BMI: The roles of eating, grazing and goods," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 2-15, March.
    17. Arthur Lewbel & Serena Ng, 2005. "Demand Systems with Nonstationary Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(3), pages 479-494, August.
    18. Charles L. Baum & Shin-Yi Chou, 2016. "Why has the prevalence of obesity doubled?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 251-267, June.
    19. Staudigel, Matthias, 2011. "How (much) do food prices contribute to obesity in Russia?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 133-147, March.
    20. Ruhm, Christopher J., 2012. "Understanding overeating and obesity," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 781-796.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Household Survey Data; Healthy and Unhealthy Foods; Overweight and Obesity; Elasticity of Substitution.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eei:rpaper:eeri_rp_2010_40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Julia van Hove (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eeriibe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.