Jayachandran N. Variyam

Characterizing the Distribution of Macronutrient Intake among U.S. Adults: A Quantile Regression Approach

Since the risk of dietary inadequacy or excess is greater at the tails of the nutrient intake distributions than at the mean, marginal effects of explanatory variables estimated at the conditional mean using ordinary least squares may be of limited value in characterizing these distributions. Quantile regression is effective in this situation since it can estimate conditional functions at any part of the distribution. Quantile regression results suggest that age, education, and income have a larger influence at intake levels where the risk of excess is greater compared with intake levels where the risk of excess is lower.

Modelling nutrition knowledge, attitudes, and diet-disease awareness: the case of dietary fibre.

Understanding how nutrition knowledge and attitudes vary across different population groups is critical for designing and evaluating nutrition education programmes and monitoring the nations progress toward dietary goals. In this paper we use the Diet and Health Knowledge component of the USDA Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals to examine consumer knowledge of dietary fibre, fibre consumption attitudes and the awareness of fibre-related health problems. We use a latent variable probit model to estimate the relationships between an individualss socio-demographic characteristics and his or her fibre knowledge, attitude and disease-awareness. The results suggest that the demographic profile of persons least knowledgeable about the fibre content of foods is low income, male, Black, Hispanic, smoker and low education levels. Add to this list younger individuals and one has a good description of those who lack information on the importance of eating plenty of grain products as well as those who lack awareness of fibre/disease links. The research suggests that messages about increasing fibre intake may have greatest success when targeted to individuals with some or all of these characteristics.

Managerial Inputs and the Growth of Rural Small Firms

Growth of rural small firms is influenced by education and work effort of owner or manager, and by degree of technology adoption and planning. Results are based on analysis of data from a small business survey in twenty-five rural Georgia counties. Employment growth in a sample of manufacturing, sales, and service firms is examined. Independent firms, sole proprietorships, and firms owned by women are found to have significantly lower-than-average growth rates. The study confirms earlier findings that firm growth is negatively related to firm size and age. Implications for small business assistance programs are discussed.