Geospatial and Time Series Analysis of Food Prices and Obesity

描述（由申请人提供）：RTI国际提出了一项创新的方法和应用研究，题为“食品价格与肥胖的地理空间和时间序列分析：来自含糖饮料价格的证据”，以提高开展肥胖政策研究的科学能力。这个项目的动机是由于研究界需要高质量的社区水平的食品价格测量，以及目前学术研究人员、政策分析师和立法者之间关于大糖加糖饮料（SSB）税的有效性的积极辩论。提出的空间经济学研究将利用尼尔森公司收集的超市销售和家庭购买记录的光学扫描仪数据来确定构建高质量社区一级食品价格测量的可行性。通过将这些措施与地理编码的国家健康访谈调查（NHIS）数据相匹配，并检查SSB价格对体重指数（BMI）的因果影响，将验证价格措施在为肥胖政策提供信息方面的效用。价格内生性将通过使用工具变量来控制，这些工具变量与SSB和非SSB供应的成本相关，但与SSB和非SSB需求无关。该研究将通过(1)开发新的食品价格微观数据和(2)增强对利用经济激励（如垃圾食品税和/或健康食品补贴）扭转肥胖流行的前景的理解，直接使肥胖政策研究者和政策制定者受益。完成后，价格微数据将提供给研究界。拟议的为期两年的项目有两个目标：目标1：深入了解根据超市销售和家庭购买的现有扫描仪数据制定高质量的社区一级食品价格措施的可行性，并将这些价格措施与地理编码的健康调查数据相匹配。目标2：验证食品价格微观数据在计量经济模型中的效用，该模型将肥胖与SSB价格和建筑环境措施联系起来。利用这些结果来阐明，高额的社保税是否可能影响健康结果。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): RTI International has proposed innovative methodological and applied research entitled Geospatial and Time Series Analysis of Food Prices and Obesity: Evidence from Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Prices to enhance scientific capabilities for conducting obesity policy research. This project is motivated by the research community's need for high-quality community-level measures of food prices and by the currently active debate among academic researchers, policy analysts, and lawmakers on the efficacy of large sugar- sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes. The proposed spatial economics research will determine the feasibility of constructing high-quality community-level food price measures using optical scanner data on supermarket sales and household purchase records collected by The Nielsen Company. The utility of the price measures in informing obesity policy will be validated by matching these measures with geocoded National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data and examining the causal effect of SSB prices on body mass index (BMI). Price endogeneity will be controlled by using instrumental variables that are correlated with the costs of SSB and non-SSB supply but uncorrelated with SSB and non-SSB demand. The proposed research will directly benefit obesity policy researchers and policy makers through (1) the development of new food price microdata and (2) the enhanced understanding of the prospect of leveraging economic incentives such as junk food taxes and/or healthy food subsidies to reverse the obesity epidemic. Upon completion, the price microdata will be made available to the research community. The proposed 2-year project has two aims: Aim 1: Gain insights regarding the feasibility of developing high-quality community-level measures of food prices based on existing scanner data on supermarket sales and household purchases and matching these price measures with geocoded health survey data. Aim 2: Validate the utility of the food price microdata in an econometric model relating obesity to SSB prices and measures of the built environment. Use the results to shed light on whether large SSB taxes are likely to affect health outcomes.