Five-a-day, a price to pay: an evaluation of the UK program impact accounting for market forces.
We provide an ex-post assessment of the UK 5-a-day information campaign, where the positive effects of information are disentangled from potentially conflicting price dynamics. Using 4 years of data from the Expenditure and Food Survey between 2002 and 2006, we estimate that the 5-a-day program has lifted fruit and vegetable consumption by 0.3 portions, on average. We also provide quantitative evidence of a differentiated impact by income group, ranging from 0.2 to 0.7 portions. All impacts are larger than those observed by simply comparing pre-policy and post-policy intakes.
Department of Statistics, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy. m.mazzocchi@unibo.it
Sara
S
Capacci
Mario
M
Mazzocchi
D005260:Female; D005638:Fruit / Q000191:economics*; D006291:Health Policy; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008297:Male; D040541:Marketing; D008875:Middle Aged; D015397:Program Evaluation; D006113:United Kingdom; D014675:Vegetables / Q000191:economics*