Five-a-day, a price to pay: an evaluation of the UK program impact accounting for market forces.

We provide an ex-post assessment of the UK 5-a-day information campaign, where the positive effects of information are disentangled from potentially conflicting price dynamics. Using 4 years of data from the Expenditure and Food Survey between 2002 and 2006, we estimate that the 5-a-day program has lifted fruit and vegetable consumption by 0.3 portions, on average. We also provide quantitative evidence of a differentiated impact by income group, ranging from 0.2 to 0.7 portions. All impacts are larger than those observed by simply comparing pre-policy and post-policy intakes.

[1]  J. Lusk,et al.  Determining the impact of food price and income changes on body weight. , 2008, Journal of health economics.

[2]  H. Keuzenkamp,et al.  Rejection Without Falsification - On the History of Testing the Homogeneity Condition in the Theory of Consumer Demand , 1995 .

[3]  T. Marsh,et al.  Does Food Safety Information Impact U.S. Meat Demand , 2004 .

[4]  A. Cullum.  Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption: the 5 A DAY programme , 2003 .

[5]  R. L. Basmann.  A Theory of Demand with Variable Consumer Preferences , 1956 .

[6]  A. Deaton.  The Analysis of Household Surveys : A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy , 1997 .

[7]  J. M. Villas-Boas,et al.  Endogeneity in Brand Choice Models , 1999 .

[8]  Boyd Swinburn,et al.  Diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases. , 2003, World Health Organization technical report series.

[9]  Kathryn Angus,et al.  The effectiveness of social marketing interventions for health improvement: what's the evidence? , 2006, Public health.

[10]  J. Alston,et al.  The Incidence of the Costs and Benefits of Generic Advertising , 2000 .

[11]  M. Mckee,et al.  Interventions designed to increase adult fruit and vegetable intake can be effective: a systematic review of the literature. , 2005, The Journal of nutrition.

[12]  B. H. Patterson,et al.  Changes in vegetable and fruit consumption and awareness among US adults: results of the 1991 and 1997 5 A Day for Better Health Program surveys. , 2002, Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

[13]  M. Wohlgenant.  Retail-to-Farm Transmission of Generic Advertising Effects , 2006 .

[14]  GianCarlo Moschini,et al.  Units of Measurement and the Stone Index in Demand System Estimation , 1995 .

[15]  I. Strand,et al.  Avoidance Costs Associated with Imperfect Information: The Case of Kepone , 1981 .

[16]  Linda Thunström,et al.  The impact of tax reforms designed to encourage healthier grain consumption. , 2009, Journal of health economics.

[17]  Marco Caliendo,et al.  The microeconometric estimation of treatment effects—An overview , 2005 .

[18]  Angus Deaton.  Price Elasticities from Survey Data: Extensions and Indonesian Results , 1990 .

[19]  M. Mazzocchi,et al.  Fat Economics: Nutrition, Health, and Economic Policy , 2009 .

[20]  C. Binns,et al.  Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption: success of the Western Australian Go for 2&5®campaign , 2008, Public Health Nutrition.

[21]  J. Alston,et al.  Beggar‐Thy‐Neighbor Advertising: Theory and Application to Generic Commodity Promotion Programs , 2001 .

[22]  A. Deaton,et al.  Quality, quantity, and spatial variation of price , 1988 .

[23]  P. Bertail,et al.  Fruit and Vegetable Consumption Patterns: A Segmentation Approach , 2008 .

[24]  I. Preston,et al.  Estimation of household demand systems with theoretically compatible Engel curves and unit value specifications , 2002 .

[25]  Thomas L. Cox,et al.  Prices and Quality Effects in Cross-Sectional Demand Analysis , 1986 .

[26]  J. Heckman.  Sample selection bias as a specification error , 1979 .

[27]  J. Chavas,et al.  An Empirical Assessment of Endogeneity Issues in Demand Analysis for Differentiated Products , 2003 .

[28]  V. Fuchs.  Reflections on the socio-economic correlates of health. , 2004, Journal of health economics.

[29]  D. Sumner,et al.  Farm subsidies and obesity in the United States: National evidence and international comparisons , 2008 .

[30]  J. Muellbauer,et al.  An Almost Ideal Demand System , 1980 .

[31]  B. Tepper,et al.  Assessing the importance of health and nutrition related factors on food demand: a variable preference investigation , 1999 .

[32]  Paolo Sckokai,et al.  Heterogeneous preferences in household food consumption in Italy , 2000 .