Research
Published/peer-reviewed papers
The obesity epidemic constitutes a large and growing share of public health spending. This paper investigates parental views on providing healthy food choices in school lunches in an attempt to contribute to a better understanding of the parents’ role in addressing childhood overweight. I created a survey that was circulated at an elementary school in Victoria, B.C. The results are discussed using a standard microeconomic framework in which parental choices of their children’s lunches depend on their views (“utility”) as well as the restrictions they face. My results suggest that parents perceive price not to be a major factor in the decision to include fruits or vegetables in their child(ren)’s school lunch. The reason provided most frequently by parents for not including fruits or vegetables every day is the expectation that their child(ren) would refuse to eat them, or have too little time at school to eat them. Some parents also mention preparation time as a reason for not including fruits and vegetables.
Published in Arbutus Review, 2014, peer-reviewed.
Working papers
Using individual-level panel data from Understanding Society I estimate the response to a disease diagnosis — heart attack or diabetes diagnosis — on a healthy lifestyle index. To overcome the endogeneity of a diagnosis, I match on initial health risks. I find individuals improve their overall lifestyle healthiness when faced with a large negative health event such as a diagnosis (heart attack or diabetes) whereas they do not respond to solely receiving information about certain disease risk factors, via a diagnosis of high blood pressure or chest pain. The drivers of the overall e ect are a decrease in the number of cigarettes smoked and an increase in the probability to quit drinking alcohol; there is no signifcant effect found for either diet or exercise. I find some heterogeneity by sex, but only when looking at individual lifestyle behaviours. Overall, the findings suggest that the realization of a disease diagnosis leads individuals to improve their lifestyle behaviours, while only a signal about their health risks leads to no such change.
Exists as: EUI Working Paper ECO 2020/02 (no longer current version, previous title: "Impact of a Health Shock on Lifestyle Behaviours")
Most recent version (Aug 2022) available on this website (click on title above)
This paper explores the associations between household determinants of dietary change — characteristics, circumstances, and particularly also the changes thereof — with particular focus on changing towards a more plant-based diet. Three analyses are under-taken to address three questions: what are the characteristics of 1) households making a change to a more plant-based diet, temporary or more permanent? 2) households not sustaining their more plant-based diet? 3) households being most likely of a certain changer-type (not, short or long)? These questions are answered using the Nielsen HomeScan Consumer Panel data. I find certain characteristics are positively associated with diet change: being vegetarian, being a one-person household, working less than 30 hours per week, changes in education, changes in income, and moving home; negatively associated characteristics include: having children at home, being of white ethnicity or stop working. These associations can be used to better understand the costs and benefits associated with diet changes.
Work in progress
Adopting a healthier lifestyle can improve quality of living. Personality characteristics (Big 5) have been shown to predict certain lifestyle behaviours. Using a UK household panel data, Understanding Society, a propensity score matching approach estimates the impact of a health shock on lifestyle improvements, with particular emphasis on the interactive effect of personality characteristics. This paper finds that individuals with changer-type personality characteristics, high or low scores of the Big 5 personality characteristics as suggested by the literature, further improve their lifestyle following a shock. No significant effect is found for the individuals with the non-changer-type personality characteristics. Furthermore, this significant effect is only found when individuals experience a strong shock, diagnosis of disease, while not when they experience a weak shock, diagnosis of disease risks. Heterogeneity across personality characteristics suggests some behavioural change costs are likely partially inuenced by personality.