More than one billion adults are overweight worldwide, and more than 300 million of them clinically obese, raising the risk of many serious diseases. Only 3.6 percent of Japanese have a body mass index (BMI) over 30, which is the international standard for obesity, whereas 32.0 percent of...

This paper examines women’s and men’s decisions to participate in physical activity and to attain a healthy weight. These outcomes are hypothesized to be related to prices of food, drink and health care services and products, the respondent’s personal characteristics (such as education,...

This paper examines the health effects of a fiscal food policy based on a combinationof fat taxes and thin subsidies. The fat tax is based on the saturated fat content of fooditems while the thin subsidy is applied to select fruit and vegetbale items. The policy is designed to be revenue neutral...

Taxing sugar-sweetened beverages has been proposed as a means to reduce calorie intake, improve diet and health, and generate revenue that governments can use to address the obesity-caused health and economic burden. Two beverage demand systems were estimated using beverage purchase data for...

The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall effectiveness of such fiscal instruments in altering diets and improving health. However, little is known about the welfare impacts of fiscal food policies on society. This paper fills a gap in the literature by...

This paper examines women’s and men’s decisions to participate in physical activity and to attain a healthy weight. These outcomes are hypothesized to be related to prices of food, drink and health care services and products, the respondent’s personal characteristics (such as education,...

A growing body of research supports the \economic insecurity" theory of obesity, which posits that uncertainty with respect to one's material well- being may be an important root cause of the modern obesity epidemic. This literature has been limited in the past by a lack of reliable measures of...

This study investigates whether peers are a contributing factor in the increase in childhood obesity rates, and whether peer effects vary by race, gender and residential neighborhood. We control for the commercial food environment around schools and residence when estimating peer effects given...

We examine the role of peer effects in childhood obesity outcomes by investigating whether obesity rates among the highest graders in a public school has an effect on obesity rates among younger grades. We use a panel dataset with obesity prevalence measured at the grade level. Our data are from...

In the last years the promotion of alternative food supply networks has grown in many developed countries as tool of Rural Development. There are evidences about the potential beneficial role of these networks in promoting healthy eating habits becoming also an important measure of health...