<p><p>Data from market research firms are increasingly being used by social science researchers. These data provide potentially useful information, including detailed nutritional information and well-measured prices, and their panel structure is appealing as it permits researchers to control for unobservable time-invariant household characteristics and to model dynamic aspects of household behaviour. We summarise the information on the nutrients in foods that is contained in one source of market research data. We show that there is a lot of variation in nutrients at the individual product level, even within narrowly defined food categories such as butter. We also show that the duration of time over which data are collected can have important implications for analysis of household-level nutrient purchases.</p></p>
Authors
Rachel Griffith
CPP Co-Director, IFS Research Director
Rachel is Research Director and Professor at the University of Manchester. She was made a Dame for services to economic policy and education in 2021.
Martin O'Connell
Research Fellow University of Wisconsin
Martin, previously Deputy Research Director, is a Research Fellow at IFS and Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin.
Journal article details
- Publisher
- Blackwell Publishing
- ISSN
- Print 0143-5671 Online: 1475-5890
- JEL
- D12, I1
- Issue
- December 2009
Suggested citation
Griffith, R and O'Connell, M. (2009). 'The Use of Scanner Data for Research into Nutrition' (2009)
More from IFS
Understand this issue
Spring Budget 2024: What you need to know
podcast
IFS reaction to the Chancellor's Spring Budget.
7 March 2024
Sure Start achieved its aims, then we threw it away
comment
"We know that poor children grow up with poor life chances. We know how to ameliorate that. The choice is ours." Paul Johnson writes for the Times.
15 April 2024
The £600 billion problem awaiting the next government
podcast
We speak to David Gauke and Giles Wilkes, two experts who have been at the heart of the spending review process.
25 April 2024
Policy analysis
The past and future of UK health spending
report
How has health spending changed over the past seven decades? How does the UK compare to other countries? What is the outlook for health spending?
14 May 2024
NHS spending has risen less quickly than was planned at the last election, despite the pandemic and record waiting lists
press release
Despite a pandemic, record waiting lists and growing rates of ill health, real-terms health spending has risen less quickly than was planned.
14 May 2024
Recent trends in and the outlook for health-related benefits
report
Recipients of and spending on health-related benefits have risen rapidly since the start of the pandemic, posing a serious challenge for policymakers.
19 April 2024
Academic research
The role of hospital networks in individual mortality
working paper
We estimate that broad-network insurers reduce mortality because they steer patients to higher-quality providers and reduce hospital congestion.
13 May 2024
Forced displacement, mental health, and child development: Evidence from Rohingya refugees
working paper
In this study, we conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 3,500 Rohingya mother-child pairs in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
10 May 2024
Labour market inequality and the changing life cycle profile of male and female wages
working paper
We estimate the distribution of life cycle wages for cohorts of prime-age men and women in the US.
15 April 2024