IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea08/6405.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

U.S. Agricultural Policy and Obesity

Author

Listed:
  • Kirwan, Barrett E.
  • Cawley, John

Abstract

The doubling of the prevalence of obesity in the U.S. since 1980 has generated tremendous interest in understanding the causes of obesity and its recent rise. We study one important potential cause that has been little investigated: U.S. agriculture policy. We document that, by pursuing policies that benefit agricultural producers, the U.S. promotes excess supply and lower prices which contribute to higher calorie intake and obesity. We estimate that agricultural subsidies account for 0.75 - 1.2 percent of the rise in average body mass index (BMI) between 1984 and 1999 in the U.S. An appreciation for how U.S. farm policy indirectly affects calorie intake and obesity may yield insights into how to best counter such unintended consequences and limit or reverse the recent rise in U.S. obesity.

Suggested Citation

  • Kirwan, Barrett E. & Cawley, John, 2008. "U.S. Agricultural Policy and Obesity," 2008 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2008, Orlando, Florida 6405, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea08:6405
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.6405
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/6405/files/470372%20version%202.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.6405?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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:ags:aaea08:6405. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.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.