Economic and Cultural Influences on Parents' Food Decisions

Economic and Cultural Influences on Parents’ Food Decisions The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Daniel, Caitlin. 2017. Economic and Cultural Influences on Parents’ Food Decisions. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41140210 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Economic and Cultural Influences on Parents’ Food Decisions A dissertation presented by Caitlin Daniel to The Committee on Higher Degrees in Sociology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Sociology Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts March 2017 © Caitlin Daniel All Rights Reserved Dissertation Advisor: Professor Michèle Lamont Caitlin Daniel Economic and Cultural Influences on Parents’ Food Decisions Abstract In the United States, diet-related conditions including obesity and diabetes have risen across the socioeconomic spectrum, but low-income people are more likely to have diets that contribute to poor health. Using interviews and grocery-shopping observations, this dissertation compares how low-income parents and their higher-income peers decide what to feed their children, and it considers how these differences may contribute to health disparities. The food choices of low-income parents are not well understood. Public health research documents correlations between individuals’ diets and both their food access and their income, but this scholarship does not establish the underlying mechanisms of food choice. Social scientists highlight how people select food according to cultural constructions of its meaning, but inquiry into the symbolic aspects of food choice in low-income American families remains limited. This dissertation examines how parents choose foods on the basis of both their economic resources and their ideas about food and family. Chapter 3 outlines how low-income caregivers evaluate the cost and value of food—what is affordable, what is pricey, and what warrants the extra expense. To ascertain whether healthy diets are affordable, food-cost studies use objective cost metrics, such as price per calorie. I show that low-income respondents evaluate the affordability of food according to other, more subjective criteria, including whether one’s children will consume the food and what it costs relative to plausible alternatives. While trying to economize in many areas, low-income parents sometimes spend more than “necessary” on foods that make their children happy, that buffer their children from deprivation, and that buoy their parental identity. iii! Chapter 4 shows how low-income parents avoid buying foods that their children might not like because food rejections erode scarce economic resources. Instead, these caregivers purchase what their children like, often highly palatable unhealthy foods. High-income respondents, in contrast, introduce new foods with little concern about the cost of waste. Existing diet-cost estimates exclude the food that children waste as they acquire new tastes. As a result, these calculations understate the true cost of providing children with a healthy diet. Chapter 5 examines low-income parents’ seemingly irrational decision to buy bottled water, even absent safety concerns about tap water. Some researchers assert that buying bottled water can exacerbate health disparities by diverting money away from health-enhancing options. Low-income respondents buy bottled water in part because they see it as cheap. In contrast, higher-income respondents find it expensive. These evaluations diverge because respondents implicitly compare bottled water to their default drink: bottled water costs less than the sugar- sweetened beverages that low-income families often consume, but it costs more than the tap water that higher-income parents favor. This chapter bridges cultural sociology and behavioral economics by proposing the concept of “cultural anchoring.” According to behavioral economists, arbitrary information can influence, or anchor, people’s judgments. I show how anchors can vary across groups in ways that lead to divergent evaluations of food cost. To close, I discuss how economic resources and cultural schemas influence parents’ food choice both additively and interactively. I highlight three types of interactive relationships: 1) the cultural constitution of economic judgments, 2) interdependence through budgetary depletion, and 3) the cultural delimitation of economically constrained options. This dissertation also suggests how to strengthen nutrition programming and policies, and how to increase public compassion for low-income families striving to nourish their children. iv! Table of Contents Front Matter List of Tables......................................................................................................................vi List of Figures....................................................................................................................vii Acknowledgements...........................................................................................................viii Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Data and Methods........................................................................................................31 Chapter 3: Is Healthy Eating Too Expensive?: How Low-Income Parents Evaluate the Cost and Value of Food ...................................................................................................................51 Chapter 4: Economic Constraints on Taste Formation and the True Cost of Healthy Eating…..96 Chapter 5: Why Poor People Buy Bottled Water........................................................................121 Chapter 6: Conclusion .................................................................................................................162 Back Matter References........................................................................................................................168 v! List of Tables Table 1: Sociodemographic Information of Participants in Full Sample and Observation Subsample.……………………………………………………………………………….38 Table 2: Respondent Marital Status and Target Child’s Age in Full Sample and Observation Subsample………………………………………………………………….39 Table 3: Respondents’ Perceptions of the Cost of Children’s Food Rejection.………………...113 Table 4: Price of Tap Water, Bottled Water, and Other Bottled Drinks………………………..151 vi! List of Figures Figure 1: The Relationship Between the Meanings of Food and of Related Domains.………….14 Figure 2: Anchoring Bottled Water on Other Bottled Beverages.……………………………...152 Figure 3: Anchoring Bottled Water on Tap Water …………………………………………….154 vii! Acknowledgements I remember my mind buzzing as an undergraduate sociology major when I learned from Emile Durkheim that freedom hinges not on unfettered volition but on the interdependence between individuals. Although this is a dissertation and not the complex societies that Durkheim wrote about, his basic insight applies. Throughout graduate school, I have enjoyed great freedom—the freedom to pursue my interests, to express my ideas, to change my course—and it is only because of others’ efforts that this freedom and its fruits have been possible. First, I want to thank my committee: Michèle Lamont, Jason Beckfield, Kathy Edin, Chris Wildeman, and Mark Pachucki. Each of them contributed essential elements to this dissertation and to my scholarly development more broadly. I was shocked to learn that the new movie Wonder Woman is not, in fact, about Michèle Lamont. Michèle staggers me with her ability to closely advise graduate students, produce mind- expanding research, run institutes, give talks on three continents in the same week, provide prompt feedback, be president, and still answer emails within 24 hours. I cannot count the times that Michèle has extended herself to me. Throughout these years, she has been attentive, never letting me or other students fall through the cracks. She is always available to meet, and if students do not approach her, she tracks them down. With immense generosity, she made possible a grant that funded this project. I cannot overstate what a colossal help this has been. Michèle not only makes the mechanics of graduate school more manageable. Fundamentally, extends to her students a vision of ourselves that we do not yet have. In treating us like real scholars in private and public settings alike, she urges us to think of ourselves sociologists poised to do meaningful work. For the attention, care, insight, and opportunity, I owe Michèle my deepest thanks. viii! Jason Beckfield has had my back since before I even joined the Harvard sociology program. When I applied from far away in Bolivia and panicked that my application might not have gone through, he went to check on the file in person. When I spent my first Thanksgiving in graduate school in Cambridge, Jason and Jocelyn Viterna invited me to their celebration. Throughout my graduate career, Jason offered impeccable guidance at important and stressful moments. As I navigated the publishing process,

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