Download or read book The Effects of Farm Commodity and Retail Food Policies on Obesity and Economic Welfare in the United States written by Abigail Mary Okrent and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many commentators have claimed that farm subsidies have contributed significantly to the "obesity epidemic" by making fattening foods relatively cheap and abundant and, symmetrically, that taxing "unhealthy" commodities or subsidizing "healthy" commodities would contribute to reducing obesity rates. The goal of this research is to estimate and compare the economic welfare effects including net benefits arising from hypothetical farm commodity and retail food policies as alternative mechanisms for encouraging consumption of healthy food or discouraging consumption of unhealthy food, or both. To do this, I develop an equilibrium displacement model that characterizes the linkages between multiple commodities that are vertically linked to multiple retail products, where the commodities and retail products are related in production and consumption. I simulate the likely effects on food and commodity consumption of eight policies that have been proposed in the literature as ways of addressing obesity: eliminating current farm programs including farm subsidies and trade barriers on agriculture, a subsidy on fruit and vegetable retail products versus subsidies on fruit and vegetable farm commodities, a tax on the fat content of food products versus a tax on the calorie content of food products, and a tax on the sugar content of food products versus a tax on sugar beet and cane farm commodities. I then translate the changes in food consumption into changes in calorie consumption, weight, and public health care expenditures, and compare the changes in social welfare for each policy.