Food prices and body fatness among youths.
We examine the effect of food prices on clinical measures of obesity, including body mass index (BMI) and percentage body fat (PBF) measures derived from bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) and dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), among youths ages 12 through 18 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This is the first study to consider clinically measured levels of body composition rather than BMI to investigate the effects of food prices on obesity outcomes among youths classified by gender and race/ethnicity. Our findings suggest that increases in the real price per calorie of food for home consumption and the real price of fast-food restaurant food lead to improvements in obesity outcomes among youths. We also find that a rise in the real price of fruits and vegetables leads to increased obesity. Finally, our results indicate that measures of PBF derived from BIA and DXA are no less sensitive and in some cases more sensitive to the prices just mentioned than BMI, and serve an important role in demonstrating that rising food prices (except fruit and vegetable prices) are indeed associated with reductions in obesity rather than with reductions in body size proportions alone.
City University of New York Graduate Center, NBER, and IZA, 365 Fifth Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10016-4309, United States. Electronic address: mgrossman@gc.cuny.edu.
Michael
M
Grossman
Department of Economics, IZA, and NBER, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 3992, Atlanta, GA 30302-3992, United States. Electronic address: tekin@gsu.edu.
Erdal
E
Tekin
Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1747 West Roosevelt Road, Chicago, IL 60608, United States. Electronic address: roywada@uic.edu.
Roy
R
Wada
D015502:Absorptiometry, Photon; D000273:Adipose Tissue; D000293:Adolescent; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002648:Child; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D004032:Diet / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000191:economics*; D017097:Electric Impedance; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D054525:Minority Health / Q000191:economics*; D018673:Nutrition Policy / Q000191:economics; D009749:Nutrition Surveys; D063766:Pediatric Obesity / Q000191:economics* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000208:ethnology; D015995:Prevalence; D017678:Sex Distribution; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D055815:Young Adult
Body composition; Body mass index (BMI); Food prices; Percentage body fat (PBF); Youth obesity