Abstract
Households, and the individuals in them, make decisions about what food to purchase and consume numerous times throughout the day. Although each individual food decision often seems mundane, they have far-reaching and significant impacts on individual and public health outcomes, environmental and sustainability goals, as well as labor market and education participation. These individual food decisions seem very personal, e.g., making chicken soup for a loved one with a cold, but there are common determinants of food choice and diet quality. Income and the price of purchased food items play a significant role in determining the type and quantity of food households purchase. How households change their consumption of healthy and unhealthy food items in reaction to changes in prices and income can inform policy aimed at reducing food-related diseases. The household time constraint also plays a major role in determining food purchases. As the opportunity cost of time increases, households shift food purchases to more convenience foods that are often higher in saturated fat and empty calories. Finally, the types and proximity of food retailers to households is an important determinant because it creates the feasible choice set households make their food choices from. This chapter discusses the theory, the current status of the literature, and areas for extension for each of the three determinants.
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Scharadin, B. (2022). Household Food Expenditures and Diet Quality. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_310-1
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