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in this project that I've been working
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on with
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Coors from the USDA and Princeton we've
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been looking at to what extent different
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households across the US bu different
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food products particularly focusing on
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how healthy are the food products that
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these different households are buying
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what we're interested in here is how
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different or how more or less healthy
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the food product products that high
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income more educated households are
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buying relative to low income less
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educated households and the goal of This
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research is to not just document those
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disparities but to try to think about
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the role that access to Food Stores
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plays in generating those disparities
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we've seen a number of government
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policies Government funding going
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towards subsidizing the entry of
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supermarkets into areas that are
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underserved in this regard so these
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areas have commonly known as food
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deserts and uh our goal in the paper is
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to think about to what extent will
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eradicating food deserts actually have a
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you know a positive impact in terms of
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improving the healthfulness of the
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products that your lowi income low
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education households households are
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buying and and closing the gap between
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High income High educated households and
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low- income low educated ourselves in
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terms of how healthy the food products
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that they're eating um
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are so the first takeaway is uh pretty
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simple it's just that we see pretty
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large disparities and differences in
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terms of what households at the higher
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end of the socioeconomic spectrum and
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the lower end of the socio economic
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spectrum are buying we uh use a lot of
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data looking at what individual
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households are
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purchasing and uh we merge that data
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with a data set that describes how
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healthy each of these products are this
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enables us to calculate an index that
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represents how healthy are the food
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products being purchased over the course
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of a month by a household and what we
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see is we see big differences in these
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healthfulness indexes between High
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socioeconomic status households and low
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socioeconomic status households olds so
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we see in particular that
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households with the um higher income so
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in the top Ts for income relative to the
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bottom tsal for income or the top toile
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for Education versus the bottom tsal for
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Education are actually purchasing food
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products that are about 40% closer to
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the USDA recommend
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recommendations for what households are
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recommended to spend on different food
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categories um then households in um that
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are lower in educational income so then
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when we you know take a step back and we
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think about well why do these
00:03:08
differences exist and we try to link it
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to um looking at differences in access
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to food
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products there what we find is that we
00:03:18
find that access actually plays a very
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small role in generating generating
00:03:22
these differences so what we do there is
00:03:26
we think about well we see this 40% gap
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between High soci economic status and lo
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economic status households when we're
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looking at households that live uh you
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know in different locations across the
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us but what if you look at different
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households with different socioeconomic
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characteristics that are living in the
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same location because presumably these
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households are going to have access to
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the same retail environment so they'll
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live down the road from the same
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Supermarket for example and so when we
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look at the disparities that exist
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between households that are living in
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the same location and presumably have
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access to the same um retail environment
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we see that most of the disparities
00:04:07
actually persist they're just as large
00:04:10
they're slightly smaller but they're
00:04:12
almost as large as the dispares that we
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saw when we looked at the differences in
00:04:18
what's purchased by households that live
00:04:21
in different locations so what this
00:04:23
suggests is it s suggests that um that
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access actually isn't playing a large
00:04:29
role in generating these disparities in
00:04:31
the first
00:04:35
place perhaps the most surprising uh
00:04:38
result that we found was uh to do with
00:04:41
the the fact that we look separately at
00:04:45
how high and low income households um
00:04:48
differ in their food purchases and how
00:04:50
more and less educated households differ
00:04:52
in their food purchases and what we
00:04:54
found is we found that the differences
00:04:57
along the education Dimension right much
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larger than the differences that we
00:05:02
observe along the income Dimension and
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particularly the differences along the
00:05:08
education Dimension are much more
00:05:11
persistent when you control for Access
00:05:13
and the differences across the income
00:05:16
Dimension so essentially what that means
00:05:18
is that it means that when you have two
00:05:21
households living in the same location
00:05:23
that are of different income types right
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they're going to be purchasing more
00:05:28
similar products than house olds um with
00:05:31
the different income types that live in
00:05:32
different locations however when you
00:05:35
look at two households living in the
00:05:37
same location that are more and less
00:05:39
educated say you have a college educated
00:05:41
and a high school educated household um
00:05:44
those different households are going to
00:05:46
purchase just as different products as
00:05:49
they might if they lived in different
00:05:51
locations so what this goes to suggest
00:05:54
which I found quite surprising was uh
00:05:57
that perhaps when you think about
00:06:00
differences in the healthfulness of
00:06:02
products that people are buying you hear
00:06:04
a lot about income as being sort of the
00:06:07
big factor um that differentiates
00:06:10
households there but the disparities are
00:06:12
actually larger and more persistent when
00:06:15
you're looking at households with
00:06:16
different education
00:06:21
levels so one of the reasons that we
00:06:23
embarked on this research agenda was uh
00:06:26
the fact that we're observing state
00:06:29
local as well as the federal government
00:06:32
embarking on these policies to subsidize
00:06:34
the entry of of food stores into
00:06:36
different neighborhoods so you know to
00:06:40
the extent that these policies are being
00:06:42
aimed at reducing disparities in what
00:06:46
households are consuming by reducing the
00:06:49
disparities in what households have
00:06:51
access to our result suggests that the
00:06:54
policies won't necessarily be so
00:06:56
effective if they're only just targeting
00:06:59
entry of food stores so the key takeaway
00:07:03
for these policy makers is to think not
00:07:05
just about can we put a new grocery
00:07:08
store you know nearby you know all of
00:07:12
the different households in the US but
00:07:15
what's in that grocery store um what
00:07:19
prices are being offered and what's
00:07:21
driving different households to purchase
00:07:24
different products once they're in the
00:07:25
store so there are other policies that
00:07:27
potentially need to be paired with the
00:07:30
grocery store entries such as perhap
00:07:33
perhaps subsidizing at the prices of
00:07:35
healthful food products or putting them
00:07:38
displaying them more prominently in
00:07:40
stores to encourage households that
00:07:43
perhaps don't have a taste to buy those
00:07:45
products to try them out and uh um to
00:07:49
become more aware of
00:07:53
them so the research has been done to
00:07:56
date thinking about differences in
00:08:00
Access and the role that improving
00:08:02
access might play in improving the
00:08:06
healthfulness of food products that
00:08:08
households Buy has been on a much
00:08:10
smaller scale than our study so um the
00:08:14
research has been done has been thinking
00:08:16
about when one Supermarket for example
00:08:20
enters in a neighborhood of New York you
00:08:23
know the researchers will go and they'll
00:08:25
survey households that were shopping in
00:08:28
that neighborhood before the supermarket
00:08:31
entered and then after the supermarket
00:08:32
entered and comparing their their food
00:08:35
purchases what we're doing is on a much
00:08:38
larger scale we're thinking about how
00:08:41
these uh the entry of food stores
00:08:45
changes the consumption of households
00:08:47
all across the US so uh our results are
00:08:50
much more generalizable in terms of
00:08:53
thinking about how the average household
00:08:56
might respond to supermarket entry
00:08:58
rather than just thinking about how a
00:09:00
household in a particular neighborhood
00:09:02
might respond to supermarket
00:09:07
entry so this paper and our results here
00:09:11
have uh really
00:09:13
uh left open the question of what
00:09:17
actually does Drive most of the
00:09:20
disparities in terms of what households
00:09:21
are buying so if we have households that
00:09:24
are shopping in the exact same store
00:09:27
buying very different food products we
00:09:29
see systematic differences between High
00:09:31
socioeconomic status households and low
00:09:33
socioeconomic status households and what
00:09:36
they're buying in spite of them having
00:09:38
access to the same food products and the
00:09:41
same prices available to them the
00:09:44
question is then why they buying
00:09:46
different products so we have two main
00:09:49
hypotheses here both of which been have
00:09:52
been discussed in the media previously
00:09:54
one is that you have a low soci economic
00:09:57
status households not having the money
00:10:00
enough money to spend on healthful food
00:10:03
products perhaps healthful food products
00:10:06
cost more in the supermarket they take
00:10:08
more time to prepare and that means that
00:10:11
low-income households are potentially
00:10:13
priced out of purchasing these food
00:10:15
products another
00:10:16
hypothesis is that these different
00:10:19
households have different tastes perhaps
00:10:21
due to different social norms perhaps
00:10:23
they grew up buying different food
00:10:26
products eating different food products
00:10:28
so they're just they don't like healthy
00:10:30
foods and they prefer to eat unhealthy
00:10:32
Foods so the question is which of
00:10:36
these
00:10:38
explanations explains more of the
00:10:41
differences in what we observe and the
00:10:43
reason this is important is because if
00:10:45
we actually want to come up with a
00:10:46
policy that's going to you know shorten
00:10:49
or reduce the gap between what these
00:10:52
different households are purchasing is
00:10:54
going to that policy is going to look
00:10:57
very different if
00:10:59
the differences are driven by
00:11:01
differences in tastes versus differences
00:11:03
in
00:11:04
affordability and so if it's differences
00:11:07
in affordability you might want to think
00:11:09
about taxing unhealthy Foods or
00:11:11
subsidizing healthy foods whereas if
00:11:13
it's differences in tastes then perhaps
00:11:16
some of these policies such as um um
00:11:19
improving uh the uh um the access within
00:11:23
stores of healthful food products making
00:11:25
them more prominently displayed or
00:11:28
education campaigns to perhaps try to
00:11:31
shift social norms um amongst lower
00:11:33
socioeconomic households towards buying
00:11:36
healthier foods
00:11:40
[Music]
