Assessing the impact of income policies on healthy diet: Epidemiological analyses and microsimulation

Supervisors:

Professor Vittal Katikireddi ,School of Health & Wellbeing

Dr Daniel Kopasker ,School of Health & Wellbeing

Dr Jana Anderson ,School of Health & Wellbeing

Dr Claire Niedzwiedz ,School of Health & Wellbeing

Summary:

Household income is a major driver of socioeconomic inequalities influencing dietary intake and quality of consumed diet. However, food choice is also influenced by the food environment (availability of food outlets, advertising) as well as psychosocial attributes such as dietary knowledge, food preparation skills and perceptions of importance of healthy diet. It is currently not known how much improvement in income would lead to measurable improvement in dietary quality when keeping other factors the same and if physical and mental health play a role. It is not clear if an improvement in income would directly lead to improved diet, or whether it would be first absorbed by other competing material resources – for example paying bills, home improvements, and only after these are satisfied, improvement in diet will follow. Improvement in income can be achieved by tax relief, cheaper cost of food through subsidies, or distribution of food vouchers, for example. This project will use data from Understanding Society, a longitudinal study of 40,000 UK households, and use causal epidemiological analysis and microsimulation to understand how small and large income changes affect diet. This will help to inform government policy and interventions to reduce health inequalities.