Three essays on nutritional disparities and policies in U.S. food purchases

Abstract

This dissertation contains three essays examining the nutritional disparities and policy interventions aimed at improving dietary quality in the U.S. The second chapter investigates the nutritional quality gap between food-secure and food-insecure households in the United States using the public access USDA's National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). Employing an unconditional quantile decomposition approach, the study reveals that disparities in nutritional quality persist across the distribution of the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2010 scores. Differences in household characteristics account for the majority of the diet quality gap among households with lower nutritional quality, whereas for households with higher nutritional quality, the diet quality gap is influenced more by differences in how these characteristics translate into dietary outcomes. The third chapter examines the impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on the dietary quality of Black households using an instrumental variable unconditional quantile regression (IVUQR) approach, again utilizing the public access FoodAPS dataset. The analysis finds that SNAP participation is associated with lower dietary quality for Black households, particularly at lower-to-middle quantiles of the HEI-2010 distribution, primarily due to an increased acquisition of foods high in empty calories. Compared to White SNAP households, as represented by their primary food purchaser, Black SNAP households show more stable nutritional outcomes across food sources, meaning their diet quality remains relatively consistent between food-at-home and food-away-from-home purchases. The fourth chapter evaluates the potential impact of an industry-wide sugar content ceiling on the U.S. sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) market. Utilizing demand estimates from a random coefficients logit model and Circana point-of-sale (Pos) scanner data, the study simulates an how industry-wide product reformulation would affect equilibrium shares and per capita sugar amounts from purchasing SSBs.