IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/saea15/197546.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Impact of Access to Healthy Food and Lifestyle on Obesity: The Evidence from U.S. Counties

Author

Listed:
  • Ilunga, Yves T.
  • Saghaian, Sayed

Abstract

The intent of the present article is to measure the economic impact of access to healthy food on obesity. This study uses a linear regression econometrics model to achieve this purpose. Obesity is considered as the dependent variable and a number of other factors such as the number and availability of farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture programs in the U.S., the number and accessibility of fast food restaurants, and the availability of recreation and fitness facilities are considered as independent variables. Using the USDA county level data, the results show that beyond access to healthy food, many other factors explain the observed variations in obesity rates in the model. Moreover, the results indicate that the increase of household income and the increase of full service restaurants both have a negative impact on obesity rate. It was also observed that age plays a significant role in explaining obesity with people over 65 who likely eat healthier than people under the age of 18. This study also discusses the factors contributing to the change in obesity rates in order to promote a quality healthy life.

Suggested Citation

  • Ilunga, Yves T. & Saghaian, Sayed, 2015. "Impact of Access to Healthy Food and Lifestyle on Obesity: The Evidence from U.S. Counties," 2015 Annual Meeting, January 31-February 3, 2015, Atlanta, Georgia 197546, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:saea15:197546
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.197546
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/197546/files/Impact%20of%20Access%20to%20Healthy%20Food%20and%20Lifestyle%20on%20Obesity%20final.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.197546?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bonanno, Alessandro & Goetz, Stephan J., 2010. "Adult Obesity and Food Stores’ Density – Evidence from State-Level Panel Data," 2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado 61341, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bimbo, Francesco & Viscecchia, Rosaria & Nardone, Gianluca, 2012. "Does the alternative food supply network affect the human health?," 126th Seminar, June 27-29, 2012, Capri, Italy 126060, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    2. Xun Li & Rigoberto A. Lopez, 2016. "Food environment and weight outcomes: a stochastic frontier approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(47), pages 4526-4537, October.

    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:saea15:197546. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/saeaaea.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.