Local Food Prices Research Articles

Does inflation kill? Exposure to food inflation and child mortality

Unlike extreme malnutrition shocks, such as famine and drought which grab the attention of the media, international aid organizations and policymakers, malnutrition due to food price hikes are often neglected and their impacts on children are not well known. It is well established that malnutrition during the critical periods of early life – between conception and the first 1000 days after birth – has lasting consequences on health and mortality. In this paper, using a uniquely constructed data from Ethiopia that takes advantage of high-frequency local retail food prices, we examine the impact of early life exposure to food price inflation on child mortality. Following survival events since conception, we estimate the causal impact of exposure to inflation during in-utero and infancy. The results show that exposure to a 10 percent inflation in staple food prices during in-utero decreases the survival of children under the age of five by about 5.4 percent. We also find that the impacts are non-linear depending on the specific month of exposure and substantially vary by observable characteristics and the type of staple food.

Trade and agricultural technology adoption: Evidence from Africa

The incentives for and effects of widespread technology adoption depend on the trade costs separating producers from input and output markets. I incorporate the decision to adopt imported fertilizer into a model of agricultural trade between 230 regional markets across sub-Saharan Africa. I then evaluate two alternative approaches to promoting technology adoption: lowering trade costs and subsidizing fertilizer. Whereas trade cost reduction shifts production towards the most productive regions, subsidies lead to larger increases in fertilizer use. Greater adoption lowers local food prices under existing high trade costs but only increases farmer incomes when trade costs are low.

Heterogeneous Impact of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Benefit Changes on Food Security by Local Prices

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit amount is fixed across all 48 states (except Hawaii and Alaska), although food prices vary widely. Hence, the real value of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits can directly affect the purchasing power of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants and subsequently their food insecurity. Using the 2 most recent changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit formula in 2009 and 2013, this study examines whether the changes in benefit level affected food security of participants differentially depending on local food prices. Data from the Current Population Survey-Food Security Supplement 2008-2009 and 2012-2013, merged with the Regional Price Parities from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, were used. Linear regression with a differences-in-differences strategy estimated the effects of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit changes on the food security of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program households, separately by those in high- and low-cost areas. The analyses were completed in 2019. After the benefit increase, the prevalence of low food security among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program households living in high-cost areas declined by 11.2 percentage points (95% CI=1.6, 20.8). Following the benefit decrease, the prevalence of very low food security among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program households increased by 8.7 percentage points (95% CI=3.6, 13.8) in high-cost areas. In contrast, there was no statistically significant difference between Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and non-Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program households in low-cost areas in response to the benefit changes. Given the heterogeneous effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit changes on food security by local food prices, this study provides additional evidence for the ongoing policy debate regarding whether the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit amounts should be adjusted to the cost of living.

Price premium or price discount for locally produced food products? A temporal analysis for Hawaii

The local food movement in Hawaii has been gaining traction in recent years. However, it is unclear whether consumers’ preference for locally produced food items translates to a higher price, compared to imported alternatives, over time. According to short-term (eg single-year) scanner data, the results of hedonic pricing studies on the existence and level of local food price premiums or discounts across products are mixed. It appears that premiums or discounts for locally produced food products can vary considerably. To detect the temporal changes, if any, in these local price premiums or discounts, this study uses yearly time-series scanner data pertaining to four food products—lettuce, tomatoes, milk and eggs—to estimate the hedonic price model. We conclude that there are temporal changes in local price premiums for locally produced products in Hawaii. However, the temporal changes vary across food types.

Local food prices, SNAP purchasing power, and child health

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) is one of the most important elements of the social safety net. Unlike most other safety net programs, SNAP varies little across states and over time, which creates challenges for quasi-experimental evaluation. Notably, SNAP benefits are fixed across 48 states; but local food prices vary, leading to geographic variation in the real value – or purchasing power – of SNAP benefits. In this study, we provide the first estimates that leverage variation in SNAP purchasing power across markets to examine effects of SNAP on child health. We link panel data on regional food prices to National Health Interview Survey data and use a fixed effects framework to estimate the relationship between local purchasing power of SNAP and children’s health and health care utilization. We find that lower SNAP purchasing power leads to lower utilization of preventive health care and more days of school missed due to illness. We estimate no effect on parent-reported health status.

Investigating Treatment Effects of Participating Jointly in SNAP and WIC when the Treatment Is Validated Only for SNAP

The U.S. Department of Agriculture operates several food assistance programs aimed at alleviating food insecurity. We study whether participation in both participation in both SNAP and WIC alleviates food insecurity compared with participation in SNAP alone. We bound underlying causal effects by applying nonparametric treatment effect methods that allow for endogenous selection and underreported program participation when validation data are available for one program (treatment) but not the other. We estimate average treatment effects using data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). FoodAPS includes administrative data to validate SNAP participation. Information on local food prices allows us to construct a food expenditure‐based monotone instrumental variable that does not require a typical instrumental variable exclusion restriction. Under relatively weak monotonicity assumptions, we identify that the impact of participating in both programs relative to SNAP alone is strictly positive, suggesting that the programs are nonredundant. This evidence can support improved design and targeting of food programs.

The Impact of a City-Level Minimum Wage Policy on Supermarket Food Prices by Food Quality Metrics: A Two-Year Follow Up Study.

Objective: To examine the effects of increasing minimum wage on supermarket food prices in Seattle over 2 years of policy implementation, overall and differentially across food quality metrics. Methods: Prices for the UW Center for Public Health Nutrition (CPHN) market basket of 106 foods were obtained for 6 large supermarket chain stores in Seattle (“intervention”) and for the same chain stores in King County (“control”) at four time points: 1-month pre- (March 2015), 1-month post- (May 2015), 1-year post- (May 2016), and 2-years post-policy implementation (May 2017). Prices for all food items were standardized and converted to price per 100 kcal. Food quality metrics were used to explore potential differential price increases by (a) food groups, as defined by US Department of Agriculture; (b) NOVA food processing categories, and (c) nutrient density quartiles, based on the Nutrient Rich Foods Index 9.3. Separate difference-in-differences linear regression models with robust standard errors, examined price differences per 100 kcal overall, clustered by store chain, and stratified by each food quality metric. Results: There were no overall market basket price changes attributable to Seattle’s minimum wage policy. Moreover, no minimum wage effect was detected by USDA food group, food processing, or nutrient density categories. Conclusions: Local area supermarket food prices were not impacted by Seattle’s minimum wage policy 2 years into policy implementation and after the first increase to $15/h overall or by sub-classification. Low-income workers may be able to afford higher quality diets if wages increase yet supermarket prices stay the same.

Long-term impacts of an unanticipated spike in food prices on child growth in Indonesia

Abstract Unanticipated spikes in food prices can increase malnutrition among the poor, with lasting consequences; however, livelihood strategies that include producing food for home consumption are expected to offer a measure of protection. To test this, we use anthropometric and consumption data from Indonesia collected before and after the 2007/08 food price crisis. Based on standardized height and weight measures, our results indicate that soaring food prices had a significant and negative impact on child growth among households that did not produce food for home consumption. A corresponding effect was undetectable for the households that did. The results remain robust when income effects from increased commercial sales, and possible attritions through migration and fostering are considered. Further, local food price changes were uncorrelated with the share of producing-households in the village and village’s initial average child nutrition status, suggesting that observed outcomes are directly attributable to market events and livelihood strategies. Gender differences were not detected. Our findings imply that the food price crises can have negative impacts on children, potentially leading to lifelong disadvantages. Livelihood choices that include food production provide protection against price hikes but may trap households on low income paths.

Change in cost and affordability of a typical and nutritionally adequate diet among socio-economic groups in rural Nepal after the 2008 food price crisis

Diet quality is an important determinant of nutrition and food security and access can be constrained by changes in food prices and affordability. Poverty, malnutrition, and food insecurity are high in Nepal and may have been aggravated by the 2008 food price crisis. To assess the potential impact of the food price crisis on the affordability of a nutritionally adequate diet in the rural plains of Nepal, data on consumption patterns and local food prices were used to construct typical food baskets, consumed by four different wealth groups in Dhanusha district in 2005 and 2008. A modelled diet designed to meet household requirements for energy and essential nutrients at minimum cost, was also constructed using the ‘Cost of Diet’ linear programming tool, developed by Save the Children. Between 2005 and 2008, the cost of the four typical food baskets increased by 19% – 26% and the cost of the nutritionally adequate modelled diet increased by 28%. Typical food baskets of all wealth groups were low in macro and micronutrients. Income data for the four wealth groups in 2005 and 2008 were used to assess diet affordability. The nutritionally adequate diet was not affordable for poorer households in both 2005 and 2008. Due to an increase in household income levels, the affordability scenario did not deteriorate further in 2008. Poverty constrained access to nutritionally adequate diets for rural households in Dhanusha, even before the 2008 food price crisis. Despite increased income in 2008, households remain financially unable to meet their nutritional requirements.

Nutrient density: addressing the challenge of obesity.

Obesity rates are increasing worldwide. Potential reasons include excessive consumption of sugary beverages and energy-dense foods instead of more nutrient-rich options. On a per kJ basis, energy-dense grains, added sugars and fats cost less, whereas lean meats, seafood, leafy greens and whole fruit generally cost more. Given that consumer food choices are often driven by price, the observed social inequities in diet quality and health can be explained, in part, by nutrition economics. Achieving a nutrient-rich diet at an affordable cost has become progressively more difficult within the constraints of global food supply. However, given the necessary metrics and educational tools, it may be possible to eat better for less. New metrics of nutrient density help consumers identify foods, processed and unprocessed, that are nutrient-rich, affordable and appealing. Affordability metrics, created by adding food prices to food composition data, permit calculations of both kJ and nutrients per penny, allowing for new studies on the economic drivers of food choice. Merging dietary intake data with local or national food prices permits the estimation of individual-level diet costs. New metrics of nutrient balance can help identify those food patterns that provide optimal nutritional value. Behavioural factors, including cooking at home, have been associated with nutrition resilience, defined as healthier diets at lower cost. Studies of the energy and nutrient costs of the global food supply and diverse food patterns will permit a better understanding of the socioeconomic determinants of health. Dietary advice ought to be accompanied by economic feasibility studies.

The Herring Enlightenment: Adam Smith and the reform of British fishing subsidies, 1783–1799

In late eighteenth-century Britain, Adam Smith was the most influential thinker to offer advice on fisheries policy. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith argued that subsidized, offshore fishing vessels were being built to catch subsidies, not fish. He argued that the tonnage bounties, intended to promote an export trade in herring, had instead raised local food prices and destroyed the Scottish small-boat fishery. This article describes the parliamentary inquiries this criticism joined, including whether public subsidies could help to build a British fishery at an appropriate scale. Speculating on the relative role of politics, geography and Enlightenment thinking in the parliamentary debate, it concludes that the herring itself made the public subsidies system succeed. The ‘Grand Shoal’ known in earlier decades reassembled along the Scottish coasts, and catches by vessels of all sizes increased dramatically. When, by 1799, British herring catches equalled the Dutch fishery at its peak, the ‘fickle’ herring made Adam Smith’s experiment in fish policy and politics a success.

Local Food Prices and International Price Transmission

World food prices spiked in the periods 2007–8 and 2010–11. The impact of these spikes in world food prices on local food prices and thus on local consumers is determined by the food price pass through. Pass through is defined as the extent to which changes in world food prices lead to changes in local food prices. We examine the determinants of variation in food price pass through from global to local consumer prices in a global sample of 147 countries, using FAO data on world food prices and ILO data on food prices for consumers. While market integration matters, our study finds that income per capita is the dominant factor explaining cross-country variation in pass through of food prices. We estimate an elasticity of about −0.3 of pass through with respect to income per capita. This means far greater price transmission of food price shocks at the commodity level to final consumers in low-income countries than in high-income countries. The implication is that future swings in world food prices will in particular jeopardize food security in poor countries. Trade policy measures of market integration also affect the pass through significantly, whereas infrastructure and geography measures play no significant role.

Global Fish Trade, Prices, and Food Security in an African Coral Reef Fishery

ABSTRACTThis study evaluated the potential impact of global fish trade on local food prices by analyzing a 16-year locally collected time series of disaggregated coral reef fish products and prices that differed in their market chain linkages—ranging from local to international markets. We were primarily interested in evaluating how local and global markets interacted with the local prices of beef, fish, and maize. There was no cointegration between the prices of exported octopus and that of maize and beef over this study period. Further, the three types of fish and associated markets responded in different ways to various price changes. For internationally traded octopus, we found a positive association between price and catch rates but no evidence that the global trade in octopus markets created local inflation, particularly the prices of the fish eaten by the poor. In general, there was no evidence for price transmission from export to nonexport fish products even though fishers appeared to focus on octopus when prices were high. Consequently, fishers' behaviors and trade policies that promote adjusting fishing effort to internationally traded fish did not appear to promote poverty or food insecurity in this fishery.

Global Oil Prices and Local Food Prices: Evidence from East Africa

It is widely believed that oil prices impact food prices in developing countries. Yet rigorous evidence on this relationship is scarce. Using maize and petrol price data from east Africa, we show that global oil prices do affect food prices but primarily through transport costs, rather than through biofuel or production cost channels. We find that global oil prices transmit much more rapidly to the pump and then to local maize prices than do global maize prices, suggesting that the immediate effects of correlated commodity price shocks on local food prices are driven more by transport costs than by the prices of the grains themselves. Furthermore, we present suggestive evidence that, for markets furthest inland, changes in world oil prices have larger effects on local maize prices than do changes in world maize prices.

Fertilizer subsidies, political influence and local food prices in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Nigeria

The last decade has seen a resurgence in the use of fertilizer subsidies in sub-Saharan Africa. However, there is limited empirical evidence on the effects of fertilizer subsidy programs on local food prices. Using an instrumental variables approach, we explore the effect of a fertilizer subsidy program on the seasonal growth rates of grain prices in Nigeria. Our results suggest that the fertilizer subsidy program had very small effects on the growth rates of grain prices between the post-planting and post-harvesting seasons. We also find that political influence played a role in the distribution of subsidized fertilizer. We discuss how the weak effects on the price growth rates may be caused by low market orientation, output market structures, greater focus on farmers’ incomes, low marginal productivity of fertilizer, and politically influenced targeting.

Examining the link between food prices and food insecurity: A multi-level analysis of maize price and birthweight in Kenya

In developing countries where many poor people rely on rainfed, locally produced food for the majority of their caloric intake, shifts in climate and weather patterns can dramatically reduce agricultural productivity. The reduction in agricultural productivity reduces overall food availability and ultimately impacts food accessibility, putting millions of people at risk for malnutrition. In this project we focus on Kenya where roughly a third of households are food insecure. We examine the relationship of the price of maize and low birth weight to help quantify the impact of local food prices on one outcome of household food insecurity. Using spatially referenced data from recent Kenyan Demographic and Health Survey datasets, price data, livelihood information, and a remotely sensed-based measure of local growing season productivity, we develop a dataset linking pregnancies occurring from 2001 to 2008 to the spatially and temporally relevant maize price data. We construct several regression models to examine the impact of local maize prices and remotely sensed based estimates of crop production on infant birth weight – specifically low birth weight. The results of the models highlight the importance of including community crop production to evaluate maize price impacts on low birth weight outcomes. Also, because of the positive correlation between pre-pregnancy maize prices and birth weight, the results suggest that some households may benefit from high prices or that high prices may impact the number of conceptions. More generally, our work demonstrates that multilevel models that account for community-level variation are important for disentangling these complex relationships and can contribute to the discussion of how to design more effective food policies.

Local Food Prices and Their Associations With Children’s Weight and Food Security

Both obesity and food insecurity are important public health problems facing young children in the United States. A lack of affordable, healthy foods is one of the neighborhood factors presumed to underlie both food insecurity and obesity among children. We examine associations between local food prices and children's BMI, weight, and food security outcomes. We linked data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, a nationally representative study of children from infancy to age 5, to local food price data from the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) Cost-of-Living Index (n = 11,700 observations). Using ordinary least squares (OLS), linear probability, and within-child fixed effects (FE) models, we exploit the variability in food price data over time and among children who move residences focusing on a subsample of households under 300% of the Federal Poverty Level. Results from ordinary least squares and FE models indicate that higher-priced fruits and vegetables are associated with higher child BMI, and this relationship is driven by the prices of fresh (versus frozen or canned) fruits and vegetables. In the FE models, higher-priced soft drinks are associated with a lower likelihood of being overweight, and surprisingly, higher fast food prices are associated with a greater likelihood of being overweight. Policies that reduce the costs of fresh fruits and vegetables may be effective in promoting healthy weight outcomes among young children.

Local Food Prices and Their Associations With Children's Weight and Food Security

Local Food Prices and Their Associations With Children's Weight and Food Security

Do High Food Prices Increase Food Insecurity in the United States?

AbstractWhile research establishing the link between high food prices and increased food insecurity in developing countries is robust, similar research about the United States has been lacking. This has been due in part to a lack of suitable price data, but it has also been due to the assumption that prices matter less in the United States, where households spend a relatively small fraction of their income on food. In this article we examine the role that local food prices play in determining food insecurity in the United States by using newly‐developed price data. We examine whether low‐income households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps) are more likely to be food insecure in areas where food prices are higher. We find that the average effect of food prices on the probability of food insecurity is positive and significant: a one‐standard deviation increase in food prices is associated with increases of 2.7, 2.6, and 3.1 percentage points in household, adult, and child food insecurity, respectively. These marginal effects amount to 5.0%, 5.1%, and 12.4% increases in the prevalence of food insecurity for SNAP households, adults, and children, respectively. These results suggest that indexing SNAP benefits to local food prices could improve the ability of the program to reduce food insecurity and economic hardship more generally in areas with high food prices.

Market Prices and Food Aid Local and Regional Procurement and Distribution: A Multi-Country Analysis

To date, no research has rigorously addressed the concern that local and regional procurement (LRP) of food aid could affect food prices and food price volatility in food aid source and recipient countries. We assemble spatially and temporally disaggregated data and estimate the relationship between food prices and their volatility and local food aid procurement and distribution across seven countries for several commodities. In most cases, LRP activities have no statistically significant relationship with either local price levels or food price volatility. The few exceptions underscore the importance of market monitoring.