Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


Panchalingam_Dissertation_Apr16.pdf (1.24 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Three Essays on the Economics of Food, Health, and Consumer Behavior

Panchalingam, Thadchaigeni
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3221-7821
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618834416383345

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Agricultural, Environmental and Developmental Economics.
There are many determinants of health such as individual dietary and health-related habits, constraints such as money and time, as well as market goods and services such as medical care, access to health insurance, and environmental conditions. In this dissertation, I focus on three key elements of household and individual consumption behaviors that are tied to economics of health and nutrition—policy, preferences, and consumption self-control. In the first essay, I demonstrate how receiving subsidized health care services can lead to new patterns of household consumption, specifically, undertaking fewer preventative health measures by the targeted households. This topic has received less attention in the literature. To do this, I investigate the effects of recent Medicaid expansions on eligible households’ quarterly food and non-food expenditures using state and time variation in Medicaid expansion. Using an event-study design, and a triple difference-in-differences framework, I find that the Medicaid eligible households from expansion states spent less on fresh produce per adult and more on over-the-counter medications and remedies while not changing their expenses on frozen fruits and vegetables which have similar nutritional value as fresh fruits and vegetables. The robust reduction in fresh produce expenditures and increase in expenditures on over-the-counter medications and remedies suggest that while expanded public health insurance increases formal healthcare activity, it decreases informal preventative non-healthcare expenditures. These findings may begin to shift the focus in the literature on the unintended consequences of Medicaid expansion from sins of commission, i.e., moral hazard responses such as increased smoking, alcohol use and junk food consumption, to sins of omission, i.e., responses in which preventative health habits erode. In the second essay, I focus on healthy eating in institutions such as schools and colleges, which is promoted in the US through programs such as improving access to local foods in cafeterias. Using a nationwide choice experiment survey, I model both individual and joint preferences of parents and students for locally sourced foods in school lunches. Results indicate that students and parents would prefer that locally produced items be added to school lunch menus. However, while parent and student preferences align on some aspects of locally sourced meal elements, their preferences are not identical, with parents displaying a higher willingness to pay for locally sourced vegetables and students displaying a higher willingness to pay for locally sourced fruit. Joint choices are influenced by both parties. Parents dominate the joint outcomes when the household income is lower, when students eat school lunch more frequently and in dyads featuring a female parent and female student compared to male parent-male student dyads. These findings may hold implications for efforts to promote locally sourced food elements in school lunches and the role of parent engagement in that process. In the third essay, I investigate what characteristics of households, if any, that predict purchase of portion-controlled sizes of full calorie carbonated beverages (i.e., soda sold in less than 12 oz containers) and whether this behavior is associated with other healthy dietary habits. I find that household demographics including income, education, and presence of children or elderly are not associated with the purchasing behavior of full calorie carbonated beverages that are less than 12 oz. However, this behavior is negatively associated with the share of carbonated beverages that are diet and positively associated with the share of food expenditure dedicated to fresh produce, which are proxies used to capture healthy dietary habits. Overall, the findings suggest that there is an association between purchases of less than 12 oz of regular carbonated beverages (i.e., the portion-controlled sizes) and portion control behavior.
Brian Roe (Advisor)
H Allen Klaiber (Committee Member)
Zoë Plakias (Committee Member)
Wuyang Hu (Committee Member)
156 p.
Agricultural Economics
Preventative non-healthcare consumption; Medicaid expansion; Ex-ante moral hazard; Local food; Joint preference elicitation; National school lunch programs; Parent-child dyads; Portion control behavior; Regular carbonated beverages; Random Forest;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Panchalingam, T. (2021). Three Essays on the Economics of Food, Health, and Consumer Behavior [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618834416383345

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Panchalingam, Thadchaigeni. Three Essays on the Economics of Food, Health, and Consumer Behavior. 2021. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618834416383345.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Panchalingam, Thadchaigeni. "Three Essays on the Economics of Food, Health, and Consumer Behavior." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618834416383345

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1618834416383345
426
© 2021, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.