Feeding Southeast Minnesota: A Model to Estimate Food Expenditures and Quantities

This Plan B paper improves and expands on the work of Wang (2011). Using data from the Consumer Expenditure survey and the American Community Survey we estimate regional food expenditures for 19 food categories in Southeast Minnesota and the Twin Cities Metro. Wang's original research almost always underestimated food expenditures. This project rst looked carefully at resolving the issues to accurately estimate food expenditures for the United States when compared to the BLS reported national food expenditures. We then proposed using a dierent model to better achieve the goals of the research. Lastly, we look into the feasibility of converting expenditures into quantities to assess the the quantity of food demand by region.