Who drinks soda pop? Economic status and adult consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages

•Adult sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) intake falls as income rises.•Adult SSB intake also falls as wealth rises.•The inverse SES gradient in SSB may help explain health disparities.•SSB taxes will fall more heavily of low-SES adults unless their demand is elastic.•Changes in income and wealth are no...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Economics and human biology 2020-08, Vol.38, p.100888-100888, Article 100888
Main Authors: Zagorsky, Jay L., Smith, Patricia K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Carbonated Beverages
Cross-Sectional Studies
Dietary Sucrose
Female
Health disparities
Humans
Income
Income - statistics & numerical data
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Middle Aged
Nutrition Surveys
Socioeconomic Factors
Soda
Sugar-Sweetened Beverages
United States
Wealth
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Adult sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) intake falls as income rises.•Adult SSB intake also falls as wealth rises.•The inverse SES gradient in SSB may help explain health disparities.•SSB taxes will fall more heavily of low-SES adults unless their demand is elastic.•Changes in income and wealth are not associated with a change in SSB intake. We use two cohorts from the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLSY79 and NLSY97), which are large, nationally representative samples of U.S. adults, to investigate consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) by SES, using nine surveys fielded between 2008 and 2016. Previous studies used income and education to measure SES, the NLS enables us to include wealth as well. Previous studies also used cross-sectional data, whereas the NLS allows us to examine whether changes in income and wealth correlate with changes in SSB intake. The results indicate an inverse gradient in SSB consumption with respect to both income and wealth, controlling for education. However, we do not find evidence that changes in income and wealth correlate with changes in SSB intake. This finding suggests that SES influences the development of SSB consumption patterns, but changes in income and wealth generally do not alter them in adulthood.
ISSN:1570-677X
1873-6130
DOI:10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100888