Choices Magazine: An evaluation of food deserts in America

A Choices Magazine theme issue released today explores the economics of food deserts.

Guest editors Dave D. Weatherspoon, Shelly Ver Ploeg, and Paula Dutko provide the theme overview and links to four more articles.  Weatherspoon and colleagues use data from a natural experiment, when a new retailer set up shop in a low-income neighborhood of Detroit.  Tatiana Andreyeva suggests that WIC's new fruit and vegetable vouchers may have improved the healthfulness of local food retail in Connecticut.  Dutko reviews the economic disadvantages observed in food deserts.  And Alessandro Bonanno's article stands out for its attention to the economics of food retail supply as well as consumer needs.  Attention to both need and supply is essential for people who want to think sharply about the food retail improvements that are truly feasible, not merely wishful thinking.

Agricultural economists say excise taxes for soda appear to be good policy

The new issue of Choices Magazine, the outreach publication from the agricultural economics profession, has a special policy theme on excise taxes for soda.  Although there are some interesting differences across the several articles, the final article by Carlisle Ford Runge, Justin Johnson, and Carlisle Piehl Runge, sums up:

Excise Taxes Appear to Be Good Policy

Taxing soda will reduce its consumption and raise revenue; by one recent estimate a 1 cent/oz. national U.S. excise tax would cut soda calorie consumption 8-10% and raise $15 billion per year (Brownell, et al., 2009). Moreover, from a theoretical perspective, the cross-subsidization from non-consumers of soft drinks to consumers resulting from such a tax is not large, and both classes of consumers can be shown to be better off (O’Donoghue and Rabin, 2006). Even if the caloric reduction in soft drinks is offset by whole milk consumption, the nutritional and metabolic advantages of milk versus soda are clear. If such consumption is of plain, reduced-fat milk, these advantages are amplified. Finally, a 1-for-1 substitution of milk for soda on a per volume basis is unlikely, due to milk’s digestibility relative to soda. For these reasons, wide adoption of such excise taxes appears to be good policy. Even if they fail to reduce caloric intake in young people, the quality of those calories will improve.

May 2012 workshop on the "food environment"

Colleagues in the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and its European sister organization are organizing an upcoming workshop on food retail, food access, and the food environment.  I am assisting with the local organizing for the workshop, here at Tufts.

Here is the open request for abstracts.

Abstracts submissions are due November 1, 2011 for the Food Environment: The Effects of Context on Food Choice conference jointly organized by AAEA and EAAE. The conference will take place May 30-31, 2012 at Tufts University in Boston.

The conference is aimed at providing insights into the influence of the food environment on the quality, price, and availability of food, associated health or environmental impacts, and to uncover the impact of policies aimed at influencing the food production and choice. For more information, including abstract submission instructions, please visit the conference website.