Abigail M. Okrent
United States Department of Agriculture
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Featured researches published by Abigail M. Okrent.
Health Economics | 2013
Bradley J. Rickard; Abigail M. Okrent; Julian M. Alston
Many commentators have speculated that agricultural policies have contributed to increased obesity rates in the United States, yet such claims are often made without any analysis of the complex links between real-world farm commodity support programs, prices and consumption of foods, and caloric intake. This article carefully studies the effects of US agricultural policies on prices and quantities of 10 agricultural commodities and nine food categories in the United States over time. Using a detailed multimarket model, we simulate the counterfactual removal of measures of support applied to US agricultural commodities in 1992, 1997, and 2002 and quantify the effects on US food consumption and caloric intake. To parameterize the simulations, we calculate three alternative measures of consumer support (the implicit consumer subsidy from policies that support producers) for the 10 agricultural commodities using information about government expenditures on agricultural commodities from various sources. Our results indicate that-holding all other policies constant-removing US subsidies on grains and oilseeds in the three periods would have caused caloric consumption to decrease minimally whereas removal of all US agricultural policies (including barriers against imports of sugar and dairy products) would have caused total caloric intake to increase. Our results also indicate that the influence of agricultural policies on caloric intake has diminished over time.
Economic Research Report | 2012
Abigail M. Okrent; Julian M. Alston
Food away from home (FAFH) comprises nearly half of all U.S. consumer food expenditures. Hence, policies designed to influence nutritional outcomes would be incomplete if they did not address the role of FAFH. However, because of data limitations, most studies of the response of food demand to policy changes have ignored the role of FAFH, and those studies that have included FAFH have treated it as a single good. We, therefore, estimate demand for 43 disaggregated FAFH and food-at-home (FAH) products, using a 2-stage budgeting framework. We find that the demands for disaggregated FAFH products differ in price responsiveness and tend to be more sensitive to changes in food spending patterns than FAH products. Many foods are found to have statistically significant substitution and complementary relationships within and among food groups. Predicted changes in quantities based on our estimates that include all goods and services and those estimates that include only a subset of foods differ substantially, implying that evaluations of health and nutrition policy based on elasticities of demand for only a subset of goods may be misleading.
Economic Research Report | 2014
Karen S. Hamrick; Abigail M. Okrent
Meals, snacks, and beverages purchased at fast-food restaurants account for an increasingly large share of a typical American’s food budget and have been blamed for Americans’ expanding waistlines and poor diet quality. This study uses data from the 2003-11 American Time Use Survey to examine the effects of time-use behaviors, prices, sociodemographic characteristics, labor force participation, and prices on fast-food purchasing patterns in the United States before and after the Great Recession. Fast-food purchasers spend less time sleeping, doing housework, eating and drinking, and watching television than nonpurchasers, and more time traveling from place to place. They also tend to have higher incomes and higher education levels. While the time that Americans spent eating out at all restaurants declined during and after the 2007-09 recession, the share of the population eating at fast-food restaurants on a given day stayed fairly constant, seemingly unaffected by the economic downturn, but the share for sit-down restaurants declined.
Agricultural and Resource Economics Review | 2014
Abigail M. Okrent; Joanna P. MacEwan
We estimate a demand system for ten nonalcoholic beverages to disentangle effects of prices, expenditures, advertising, and demographics on demand for nonalcoholic beverages for 1999 through 2010. We find that changes in demographic composition of the population between 1999 and 2008 played a much bigger role in observed purchasing patterns for recently introduced beverages like soy, rice, and almond drinks, isotonic and energy drinks, and bottled water whereas changes in prices and advertising expenditures largely explained declining demand for milk, regular carbonated soft drinks, and coffee and tea. However, between 2008 and 2010, declining demand for most nonalcoholic beverages was largely driven by income-led decreases in expenditures.
Archive | 2012
Julian M. Alston; Abigail M. Okrent; Joanna C. Parks
The obesity epidemic has been identified as the most critical public health issue facing the United States today, but it is not confined to the United States or even to high-income countries. It is a global phenomenon that reaches the entire spectrum of the income distribution, and particularly the poorest individuals within rich countries and the middleand high-income individuals in the poorest countries. Many policies have been proposed to counter obesity, and some of those proposed policies focus on altering the food system—to influence food consumption habits and thus nutrition and obesity by changing the choices available to consumers or by changing the incentives to choose. Indeed, some jurisdictions have already introduced policies restricting the sale of certain food items in schools and others have introduced taxes on certain caloric beverages. This chapter reviews what is known about the causal links between food policies and obesity and presents new evidence about the likely efficiency and effectiveness of particular proposed policies as remedies for obesity.
Archive | 2017
Julian M. Alston; Abigail M. Okrent
The recent upward trend in the adult obesity rate is attributable to an energy imbalance, where people consume more calories than they expend. Between 1970 and 2004, Americans increased their daily consumption by an average of 300–500 calories, and the quality of diets changed. The typical American diet today consists of foods and beverages with a greater degree of processing, including more calories consumed from restaurants, sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), and ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat foods. Meanwhile, although physical activity in leisure has increased slightly, physical activity in work, housework, and travel has declined steadily. The complex interaction between diet composition, eating and physical activity behaviors, and human physiology makes it difficult to pinpoint the exact mechanism through which prevalence of obesity has increased.
Archive | 2017
Julian M. Alston; Abigail M. Okrent
The primary economic rationale for government intervention to reduce obesity relates to externalities. An in-principle case can be made for government intervention on these grounds. Various interventions are feasible, including government incentives related to food consumption such as taxes or subsidies on “unhealthy” and “healthy” foods; government incentives related to healthy behavior and health outcomes; government provision of education or information about nutrition, including regulation of food labeling; government regulation of the food industry and its marketing practices, such as advertising to children; or rules and regulations pertaining to the provision of public and private health insurance. This chapter reviews these options and their relative merits in principle, paying attention to the issue of matching policy instruments to targets.
Archive | 2017
Julian M. Alston; Abigail M. Okrent
The idea that farm subsidies contribute significantly to obesity and that reducing these subsidies would go a long way toward solving the problem has been popular among the mainstream media and in policy circles. However, economists who have evaluated the issue have consistently found that farm subsidies have had negligible impacts on US obesity patterns. If anything, farm income support policies, including various subsidies and price supports, have made fattening food more expensive and reduced US obesity. New evidence from our updated economic simulation model reinforces that view and the conclusion that reformulation of farm subsidies would be ineffective and even counterproductive as a way of fighting US obesity.
Archive | 2017
Julian M. Alston; Abigail M. Okrent
Other food policies have also been implicated in the obesity epidemic. Our findings are generally negative regarding both the contributions of USDA’s food and nutrition programs (FANPs) to obesity and the potential for modifying them effectively and economically to reduce obesity. Some say strengthening the role of the US government in regulation of food labeling (the nutrition facts panel, other requirements for specific types of labels on the front or back of packages, and calorie postings at restaurants) and marketing to children will help fight obesity. Changes to current food labeling practices that are underway in the United States have potential to help some consumers to make more healthful food choices, but it is left to the food industry to self-regulate food marketing to children, and changes here have been largely ineffective. “Nudges” have been shown to complement the effectiveness of some existing policies.
Archive | 2017
Julian M. Alston; Abigail M. Okrent
Obesity was first identified as an issue of significant public policy concern in the late 1990s, after which US obesity rates continued to grow. Now, more than one-third of adult Americans are obese or extremely obese while a further one-third or more are overweight; in addition, one-third of American children are at least overweight, and about one-sixth are obese. In this chapter we document the obesity status of the nation and its genesis over the past 50 years. We review various concepts and measures of obesity, including the conventional BMI and alternatives. Then, using the BMI, we review the patterns of US obesity for adults and children over time, disaggregated spatially and among various sociodemographic groups.