Timothy K.M. Beatty

School buses, diesel emissions, and respiratory health.

School buses contribute disproportionately to ambient air quality, pollute near schools and residential areas, and their emissions collect within passenger cabins. This paper examines the impact of school bus emissions reductions programs on health outcomes. A key contribution relative to the broader literature is that we examine localized pollution reduction programs at a fine level of aggregation. We find that school bus retrofits induced reductions in bronchitis, asthma, and pneumonia incidence for at-risk populations. Back of the envelope calculations suggest conservative benefit-cost ratios between 7:1 and 16:1.

Do the Poor Pay More for Food?Evidence from the United Kingdom

Does food cost more for low-income households? This paper compares two well-known approaches to answering this question. I find that quantity discounts for a broad range of foods are statistically significant and economically important. However quantity discounting does not lead to the poor paying more for food. I find that the poor pay less than average for the food they purchase. This is explained by the poor spending a greater share of their income on foods where quantity discounting occurs. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

CURBSIDE RECYCLING IN THE PRESENCE OF ALTERNATIVES

We measure the extent to which curbside access affects quantity recycled. We use novel data to distinguish between new recycling and material diverted from other recycling modes. We find that the marginal impact of expanding curbside programs on total recycled quantities is small, in part because curbside programs significantly cannibalize returns from drop-off recycling centers. Failure to account for cannibalization from other modes may substantially overestimate the benefits of curbside programs. We conclude with simple cost-effectiveness comparisons. Results suggest that incremental expansion of curbside access may not be cost-effective.

Expenditure Response to Increases in In-Kind Transfers: Evidence from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Economic theory predicts that households who receive less in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits than they spend on food will treat SNAP benefits as if they were cash. However, empirical tests of these predictions draw different conclusions. In this study, we reexamine this question using recent increases in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, the largest of which was due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. We find that increases in benefits cause households to increase their food budget share by more than would be predicted by theory. Results are robust to a host of specification tests.

Driven to drink: Sin taxes near a border

This paper investigates household purchasing behavior in response to differing alcohol and tobacco taxes near an international border. Our study suggests that large tax differentials near borders induce economically important tax avoidance behavior, which may limit a governments ability to raise revenue and potentially undermine important health and social policy goals. We match novel supermarket scanner and consumer expenditure data to measure the size and scope of the effect for households and stores. We find that stores near/far from the international border have statistically significantly lower/higher sales of beer and tobacco than comparable stores far/near the border. Moreover, we find that households near the border report higher consumption of these same goods. This is consistent with households facing lower prices. Finally, we find measures of externalities associated with these goods are higher near the border.

Is Diet Quality Improving? Distributional Changes in the United States, 1989–2008

This article measures changes in the distribution of dietary quality among adults in the United States over the period 1989-2008. Diet quality is a direct input to health, is often used as a proxy for well-being, and is an outcome variable for a wide variety of economic interventions. For the population as a whole, we find significant improvements across all levels of diet quality. Further, we find improvements for both low-income and higher-income individuals alike. Counterfactual distributions of dietary quality are constructed to investigate the extent to which observed improvements can be attributed to changes in the nutritional content of foods and to changes in population characteristics. We find that 63% of the improvement for all adults can be attributed to changes in food formulation and demographics. Changes in food formulation account for a substantially larger percentage of the dietary improvement within the lower-income population (19.6%) vs. the higher-income population (6.4%).

Time to eat? The relationship between food security and food-related time use

OBJECTIVES In the present analysis, we seek to establish a relationship between time spent on food-related activities and food security status as well as between time spent on these activities and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly called the Food Stamp Program) participation and benefit level. DESIGN After matching similar households using Coarsened Exact Matching, we estimate the relationship between food-related time, food insecurity and SNAP participation and benefit level using a comprehensive data set that combines two subsets of the Current Population Survey from years 2004-2010: the Food Security Supplement and the American Time Use Survey. SETTING City, suburban and rural areas of the USA. SUBJECTS Non-institutionalized US population over the age of 15 years. Total sample size is 10 247 households. RESULTS In single households, food insecurity and SNAP participation are associated with 20% more time in meal preparation and 13% less time eating. Similarly, in married households, SNAP participation and benefit level are associated with 32% less time in meal preparation while food insecurity is associated with 17% less time eating and 14% less time in grocery shopping. CONCLUSIONS A significant relationship exists between time spent on food-related activities and food insecurity and SNAP. This implies that federal and state government may need to consider the time constraints many low-income households face when reforming food assistance programmes.

Expenditure Dispersion and Dietary Quality: Evidence from Canada

This paper examines links between the way in which a household spreads their food expenditure over time and the dietary quality of the food they purchase. I find that households who make more frequent, smaller food purchases buy healthier foods than households who make fewer, larger purchases. These households are more likely to purchase foods with a lower share of total calories from fats, saturated fats and a larger share of calories from fruits and vegetables. The analysis is extended using quantile regression. The effect of expenditure dispersion is found to be largest among households with poor diets i.e. those households with diets high in saturated fats and low in fruits and vegetables.

Semiparametric quantile Engel curves and expenditure elasticities: a penalized quantile regression spline approach

This article estimates nonparametric Engel curves and expenditure elasticities by quantile for an exhaustive set of household expenditure categories using a novel estimation approach. Engel curves and expenditure elasticities are vital inputs to evaluating the effects of public policies. This article examines whether Engel curves and expenditure elasticities evaluated for an average individual are importantly different from the Engel curves and expenditure elasticities at the upper and lower quantiles.

Recovering the Shadow Value of Nutrients

This article investigates the shadow values of twenty-eight different nutrients. It links the unit price of foods to the shadow values of nutrients by building on a utility theoretic model first proposed by Gorman. Maximum entropy principles are then used to reason consistently about the values of the parameters of interest. The resulting estimates are discussed and analyzed.