We study the private market response to the National School Lunch Program, documenting economically meaningful spillovers to non-recipients. We focus on the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), an expansion of the lunch program under the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Under the CEP,...

We find evidence that exposure to universal free school meals through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) had a meaningful impact on grocery spending for households with children, with monthly food purchases declining by about $11, or 5 percent. For households in zip codes with higher...

The food supply chain has experienced major disruptions from both demand and supply sides during the Covid-19 pandemic. While some consequences such as food waste are directly caused by the disruption due to supply chain inefficiency, others are indirectly caused by a change in consumer's...

We study the causes of "nutritional inequality": why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using event study designs exploiting supermarket entry and households' moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments have meaningful effects on...

We examine resource allocation in step-households, in the United States and South Africa, to test whether child investments vary according to economic and genetic bonds between parent and child. We used 18 years of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and compare food expenditure by...

Are identities fungible? How do people come to identify with specific groups? This paper proposes a revealed preference approach, using food consumption to uncover ethnic and religious identity choices in India. We first show that consumption of identity goods (e.g. beef and pork) systematically...

We use a randomized controlled trial to study the effect of large income changes, through unconditional cash transfers, on the food share of expenditures and consumption of calories among poor households in rural Kenya. Our preferred estimate of the food elasticity following USD 709 transfers is...

We examine the effect of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on the quality of household food purchases using the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) and propensity score matching. A healthy purchasing index (HPI) is...

Many developing countries use food-price subsidies or price controls to improve the nutrition of the poor. However, subsidizing goods on which households spend a high proportion of their budget can create large wealth effects. Consumers may then substitute towards foods with higher...

We study the effect of the Food Stamp Program (FSP) on consumption patterns in families headed by low-educated single mothers in the U.S. using the Consumer Expenditure Surveys for 1994-2004. Our analysis suggests that the food stamp caseload does not have any statistically significant...