Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60608, USA.
Public Health. 2011 Mar;125(3):129-35. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2010.11.014. Epub 2011 Jan 26.
To examine the extent to which various food prices were associated with the obesity status of young adults.
Retrospective cohort study of 6537 men and 5324 women in the USA using panel data from the Monitoring the Future Surveys (1992-2003), which were merged with two food-at-home and one food-away-from-home price measures from the American Chamber of Commerce Researchers Association.
Longitudinal individual random effect and fixed effect models were estimated.
This study found that food prices did not have a significant effect on the prevalence of obesity among young female adults. For young adult men, an individual random effect estimator suggested that a 10% increase in the price of fast food was associated with a 13.2% decrease in the probability of obesity, but this effect lost its economic and statistical significance once individual fixed effects were controlled for in the estimation.
Overall, the results imply that observed time-varying individual characteristics, such as working status, marital status and school enrolment status, may over-ride the effect of changes in food prices for young adults. More research employing longitudinal data is necessary to determine if food subsidies or taxes, particularly soft drink and fast food taxes or subsidies for fruit and vegetables, could be effective policy measures to curtail the increasing prevalence of obesity among young adults.
考察各种食品价格与年轻人肥胖状况之间的关联程度。
这是一项使用美国“未来监测调查”（1992-2003 年）的面板数据进行的回顾性队列研究，该调查数据与美国商会研究人员协会的两项家庭食品和一项外出食品价格指标进行了合并，共有 6537 名男性和 5324 名女性参与。
使用纵向个体随机效应和固定效应模型进行估计。
本研究发现，食品价格对年轻女性成年人的肥胖患病率没有显著影响。对于年轻男性成年人，个体随机效应估计表明，快餐价格上涨 10%，肥胖的概率就会下降 13.2%，但一旦在估计中控制了个体固定效应，这种影响就失去了经济和统计学意义。
总体而言，结果表明，观察到的随时间变化的个体特征，如工作状态、婚姻状况和入学状况，可能会超过食品价格变化对年轻人的影响。需要进行更多采用纵向数据的研究，以确定食品补贴或税收（特别是软饮料和快餐税或水果和蔬菜补贴）是否可以作为有效政策措施，遏制年轻人肥胖患病率的上升。
