Has the growth in “fast casual” Mexican restaurants impacted weight gain?
Osea Giuntella
Economics & Human Biology, 2018, vol. 31, issue C, 115-124
Abstract:
The United States is witnessing a boom in fast casual restaurants owing to the recent growth of ethnic restaurants throughout the country. This study examines the effects of proximity to a Mexican restaurant—the dominant type of ethnic fast casual restaurant—on maternal and child health. I match data on the complete residential addresses of all mothers who gave birth in the Miami metropolitan area between 1990 and 2009 to a time series of all establishments (restaurants and stores) selling food and drink. This unique data set allows me to use mother fixed effects and to exploit the variation over time of the food environment to identify the effects on maternal weight gain and childbirth outcomes. The results show that living in proximity to a Mexican restaurant is associated with an 8% lower likelihood of excessive weight gain among US-born mothers. These effects are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods and among members of disadvantaged groups (e.g., low-skilled, young, and African-American individuals). However, the results show no protective effect for foreign-born mothers. Lastly, there is no evidence of significant effects on other maternal outcomes or on various child health metrics at birth.
Keywords: Restaurant proximity; Food environment; Maternal weight gain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J1 R20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X17303015
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
Working Paper: Has the Growth in 'Fast Casual' Mexican Restaurants Impacted Weight Gain? (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:31:y:2018:i:c:p:115-124
DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2018.08.005
Access Statistics for this article
Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten
More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().