Three essays on food policy adoption and economic welfare
Date
2024
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Abstract
This dissertation contains three chapters that empirically explore policies supporting school meals and local food marketing as well as drivers of food demand with the goal of providing comprehensive insights into their complexities and implications, ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of the food systems. Recognizing school meals as critical safety nets for children in low-income households, many states in the United States (U.S.) are passing legislation to adopt universal free school meals, linking their funding to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a federally funded universal free school meal program. In the first chapter we develop a unique school district-level dataset and use a Cox regression model to demonstrate the importance of federal- and state-level policy factors in increasing the likelihood of CEP adoption. In the second chapter, we examine the relationships among stocks of community wealth, state legislation supporting farm to school (FTS), and the intensity of FTS activities. Leveraging the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2019 FTS Census, a new disaggregated database on state-level FTS policies, a new dataset of stocks of local wealth, and using a Heckman selection model, we find positive associations between cultural and social capital and FTS intensity, and associations with state FTS policies. In the third chapter, we shift our focus to examining economic welfare implications in the event of an African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak in the U.S. Although ASF is not a food safety risk and has never been detected in the U.S., little is known about changes in U.S. pork demand in case of an outbreak. Using an online survey experiment, we find that the demand for pork is predicted to shift downward by approximately 31% resulting in an annual welfare loss of $55.46 billion in the pork market, exacerbating the losses to pork producers. Results also indicate that government institutions are most trusted when it comes to sharing news about food safety, strongly suggesting its importance in generating awareness prior to and during an ASF outbreak.
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Embargo expires: 05/20/2025.
Subject
consumer behavior
food policy
school nutrition
economic welfare
community wealth
food systems