Folic acid advisories: a public health challenge?

Neural tube defects are neurological conditions affecting 1 in 1000 foetuses in France each year. If a foetus is affected there is a 90% chance of the pregnancy being terminated. Increasing folic acid intake over 400μg per day two months before and two months after conception reduces prevalence rates by 80%. Two types of government interventions exist to increase intake and reduce prevalence rates: (1) fortification of staple food, which increases population intake indiscriminately; (2) social marketing seeking to increase intake of conceiving women through information provision. France opted for the latter and has implemented it since mid-2005. This paper sets up a quasi-experimental setting to measure the impact of the french social marketing campaign on consumption using a reduced form approach. I combine a detailed scanner data on grocery purchases with a dataset on macro- and micro- nutrients. Identification exploits the variation in the usefulness of folic acid information between households: households that are conceiving or want to conceive a child use it, while those that are not conceiving do not. Results suggest evidence of a positive impact of the information policy on folic acid household availability and preferences. A value per statistical life for children is found to be at least of e 17 millions.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)