IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/101053.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The effect of sugar and processed food imports on the prevalence of overweight and obesity in 172 countries

Author

Listed:
  • Lin, Tracy Kuo
  • Teymourian, Yasmin
  • Tursini, Maitri Shila

Abstract

Background: Studies find that economic, political, and social globalization - as well as trade liberalization specifically - influence the prevalence of overweight and obesity in countries through increasing the availability and affordability of unhealthful food. However, what are the mechanisms that connect globalization, trade liberalization, and rising average body mass index (BMI)? We suggest that the various sub-components of globalization interact, leading individuals in countries that experience higher levels of globalization to prefer, import, and consume more imported sugar and processed food products than individuals in countries that experience lower levels of globalization. Method: This study codes the amount of sugar and processed food imports in 172 countries from 1995 to 2010 using the United Nations Comtrade dataset. We employ country-specific fixed effects (FE) models, with robust standard errors, to examine the relationship between sugar and processed foods imports, globalization, and average BMI. To highlight further the relationship between the sugar and processed food import and average BMI, we employ a synthetic control method to calculate a counterfactual average BMI in Fiji. Conclusion: We find that sugar and processed food imports are part of the explanation to increasing average BMI in countries; after controlling for globalization and general imports and exports, sugar and processed food imports have a statistically and substantively significant effect in increasing average BMI. In the case of Fiji, the increased prevalence of obesity is associated with trade agreements and increased imports of sugar and processed food. The counterfactual estimates suggest that sugar and processed food imports are associated with a 0.5 increase in average BMI in Fiji.

Suggested Citation

  • Lin, Tracy Kuo & Teymourian, Yasmin & Tursini, Maitri Shila, 2018. "The effect of sugar and processed food imports on the prevalence of overweight and obesity in 172 countries," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101053, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:101053
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/101053/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bergh, Andreas & Nilsson, Therese, 2010. "Good for Living? On the Relationship between Globalization and Life Expectancy," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(9), pages 1191-1203, September.
    2. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 113-132, March.
    3. Axel Dreher, 2006. "Does globalization affect growth? Evidence from a new index of globalization," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(10), pages 1091-1110.
    4. Alberto Abadie & Alexis Diamond & Jens Hainmueller, 2015. "Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(2), pages 495-510, February.
    5. Barry M. Popkin, 2003. "The Nutrition Transition in the Developing World," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 21(5-6), pages 581-597, December.
    6. Goryakin, Yevgeniy & Lobstein, Tim & James, W. Philip T. & Suhrcke, Marc, 2015. "The impact of economic, political and social globalization on overweight and obesity in the 56 low and middle income countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 67-76.
    7. José Cheibub & Jennifer Gandhi & James Vreeland, 2010. "Democracy and dictatorship revisited," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 67-101, April.
    8. John Nixon & Philippe Ulmann, 2006. "The relationship between health care expenditure and health outcomes," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 7(1), pages 7-18, March.
    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. Chris Vogliano & Jessica E. Raneri & Jane Coad & Shane Tutua & Carol Wham & Carl Lachat & Barbara Burlingame, 2021. "Dietary agrobiodiversity for improved nutrition and health outcomes within a transitioning indigenous Solomon Island food system," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 13(4), pages 819-847, August.
    2. Abrania Marrero & Andrea Lόpez-Cepero & Ramón Borges-Méndez & Josiemer Mattei, 2022. "Narrating agricultural resilience after Hurricane María: how smallholder farmers in Puerto Rico leverage self-sufficiency and collaborative agency in a climate-vulnerable food system," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(2), pages 555-571, June.
    3. Jose B. Rosales Chavez & Meg Bruening & Punam Ohri-Vachaspati & Rebecca E. Lee & Megan Jehn, 2021. "Street Food Stand Availability, Density, and Distribution Across Income Levels in Mexico City," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(8), pages 1-17, April.
    4. Luckstead, Jeff & Devadoss, Stephen, 2021. "The Effects of COVID-19-Induced Global Economic Recession on Processed Food Trade," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315856, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Fabrizio Ferretti & Michele Mariani & Elena Sarti, 2022. "Does the Prevalence of Obesity Affect the Demand for Soft Drinks? Evidence from Cross-Country Panel Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(2), pages 1-12, January.
    6. Gaironeesa Hendricks & Natalie Savona & Anaely Aguiar & Olufunke Alaba & Sharmilah Booley & Sonia Malczyk & Emmanuel Nwosu & Cecile Knai & Harry Rutter & Knut-Inge Klepp & Janetta Harbron, 2022. "Adolescents’ Perspectives on the Drivers of Obesity Using a Group Model Building Approach: A South African Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-15, February.

    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. Jerg Gutmann & Matthias Neuenkirch & Florian Neumeier, 2021. "Sanctioned to Death? The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Life Expectancy and its Gender Gap," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(1), pages 139-162, January.
    2. Niklas Potrafke, 2016. "Policies against human trafficking: the role of religion and political institutions," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 353-386, November.
    3. Manuel Funke & Moritz Schularick & Christoph Trebesch, 2023. "Populist Leaders and the Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(12), pages 3249-3288, December.
    4. Potrafke, Niklas, 2013. "Globalization and labor market institutions: International empirical evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 829-842.
    5. Niklas Potrafke & Fabian Ruthardt & Kaspar Wuthrich, 2020. "Protectionism and economic growth: Causal evidence from the first era of globalization," Papers 2010.02378, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2022.
    6. Potrafke, Niklas & Ursprung, Heinrich W., 2012. "Globalization and gender equality in the course of development," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 399-413.
    7. Welander, Anna & Lyttkens, Carl Hampus & Nilsson, Therese, 2015. "Globalization, democracy, and child health in developing countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 136, pages 52-63.
    8. Welander, Anna & Lyttkens, Carl Hampus & Nilsson, Therese, 2014. "Globalization and Child Health in Developing Countries: The Role of Democracy," Working Papers 2014:11, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    9. Niklas Potrafke, 2019. "The globalisation–welfare state nexus: Evidence from Asia," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 959-974, March.
    10. Nikitas Konstantinidis & Konstantinos Matakos & Hande Mutlu-Eren, 2019. "“Take back control”? The effects of supranational integration on party-system polarization," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 297-333, June.
    11. Niklas Potrafke & Heinrich Ursprung, 2011. "Globalization and Gender Equality in Developing Countries," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2011-33, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    12. Daniel Albalate & Germà Bel & Ferran A. Mazaira-Font, 2020. "Ensuring Stability, Accuracy and Meaningfulness in Synthetic Control Methods: The Regularized SHAP-Distance Method," IREA Working Papers 202005, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Apr 2020.
    13. Bruno Ferman & Cristine Pinto & Vitor Possebom, 2020. "Cherry Picking with Synthetic Controls," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 510-532, March.
    14. Maximiliano Marzetti & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Long-Term Economic Effects of Populist Legal Reforms: Evidence from Argentina," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 65(1), pages 60-95, March.
    15. Chiara Cavaglia & Sandra McNally & Henry G. Overman, 2020. "Devolving Skills: The Case of the Apprenticeship Grant for Employers," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(4), pages 829-849, December.
    16. Sadeghi, Ali & Kibler, Ewald, 2022. "Do bankruptcy laws matter for entrepreneurship? A Synthetic Control Method analysis of a bankruptcy reform in Finland," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 18(C).
    17. Jerg Gutmann & Katarzyna Metelska-Szaniawska & Stefan Voigt, 2024. "The comparative constitutional compliance database," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 95-115, January.
    18. Augusto Cerqua & Roberta Di Stefano, 2022. "When did coronavirus arrive in Europe?," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 31(1), pages 181-195, March.
    19. Wang, Bo & Li, Fan & Feng, Shuyi & Shen, Tong, 2020. "Transfer of development rights, farmland preservation, and economic growth: a case study of Chongqing’s land quotas trading program," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    20. César Martinelli & Marco Vega, 2019. "The Economic Legacy of General Velasco: Long-Term Consequences of Interventionism," Revista Economía, Fondo Editorial - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, vol. 42(84), pages 102-133.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Globalization; Imports; Obesity; Synthetic control method;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General

    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:ehl:lserod:101053. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.