"Elasticity of Food Demand by Outlet: Effects of the Nutrition Labeling" by Kevin McGee

Article Title

Elasticity of Food Demand by Outlet: Effects of the Nutrition Labeling Provision of the Affordable Care Act

Authors

Kevin McGee, University of Northern IowaFollow

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Since 1984, the ratio of demand for food away from home to demand for food at home in the United States has increased significantly. The relative increase in the demand for food away from home may be a major contributing factor to the growing obesity problem in the United States. To address this problem, the government passed a law requiring restaurants to report caloric values on their menus. I estimate an almost ideal demand system to investigate whether the Nutritional Labeling Provision of the Affordable Care Act has been effective in increasing the demand for food at home relative to the demand for food away from home. I do not find evidence that the Nutritional Labeling Provision has had the intended effect.

Publication Date

Spring 2016

Journal Title

Major Themes in Economics

Volume

Issue

First Page

Last Page

Copyright

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Language

File Format

application/pdf

Recommended Citation

McGee, Kevin (2016) "Elasticity of Food Demand by Outlet: Effects of the Nutrition Labeling Provision of the Affordable Care Act," Major Themes in Economics, 18, 51-65.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/mtie/vol18/iss1/6