IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/got/gotcrc/069.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Consumer Demand for Healthy Diet: New Evidence from the Healthy Eating Index

Author

Listed:
  • Zhifeng Gao

    (University of Florida)

  • Xiaohua Yu

    (Georg-August-University Göttingen)

  • Jonq-Ying Lee

    (University of Florida)

Abstract

A large volume of literature has been focusing on the measure of diet quality and consumer demand for food. However, little has estimated consumer demand for diet quality. In this article, we systematically estimate consumer demand for diet quality using the healthy eating index (HEI) developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Results show that consumers have insufficient consumption of the food containing dark green, orange vegetable, legumes and total grain. Age and education have significant impact on consumer demand for diet quality but income does not. The own price elasticities of demand for diet quality are inelastic and are larger than cross price elasticities. Asymmetric cross price elasticity exists between the diet quality of solid fats, alcoholic beverages and added sugars and the quality of other diet groups. This information is critical in policies and programs that are designed to improve consumer healthy food choice which can reduce social cost of public health.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhifeng Gao & Xiaohua Yu & Jonq-Ying Lee, 2011. "Consumer Demand for Healthy Diet: New Evidence from the Healthy Eating Index," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 69, Courant Research Centre PEG.
  • Handle: RePEc:got:gotcrc:069
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.vwl.wiso.uni-goettingen.de/courant-papers/CRC-PEG_DP_69.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Healthy Eating Index; Diet quality; Demand; Household production; Translog cost function;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis

    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:got:gotcrc:069. 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: Dominik Noe (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/82144.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.