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DR@W: New Insights - Mike Price (University of Alabama, Culverhouse College of 糖心TV)
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced a mandate requiring chain restaurants and eating establishments with twenty or more outlets in the country to post calorie counts on menus and menu boards that was modeled on several pre-existing local mandates. This paper investigates the effects of these local calorie posting laws on body mass index (BMI), obesity, and consumer well-being using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. To do so, we compare changes in outcomes of five localities (New York City, Albany County, Schenectady County, Philadelphia County, King County) and the state of Vermont – areas that fully implemented calorie posting laws between 2008 and 2011 – to those of neighboring locations without such laws. We find that calorie mandates lead to small but statistically significant reductions in BMI of 0.2 kg/m2 (1.5 pounds). However, these changes have no impact on the probability of obesity and are of similar magnitude for the obese and those of healthy weight. The estimated effects are stronger among women, non-whites, non-college graduates, those aged 50 years and older, and in areas that strongly enforced the local mandates. However, the presence of calorie mandates leads to reductions in self-reported measures of life satisfaction that are greater for people with healthy weight and for several subgroups that experienced the largest weight losses. The overall pattern of results is consistent with an economic model in which calorie labels influence consumers both by providing information and by imposing a welfare-reducing moral cost on unhealthy eating.