Results
The regression results presented in table 1 show
that none of the price or availability contextual
factors are statistically significantly related
to men’s BMI in either the cross-sectional or
longitudinal models. For women, however, the results from the individual FE model reveal
that higher fruit and vegetable prices are statistically
significantly related to higher BMI: a
one dollar increase in price results in a 0.62 unit
increase in BMI, corresponding to a fruit and
vegetable price elasticity of BMI for women of
0.02. Greater availability of fast-food restaurants
is weakly statistically significantly related
to higher BMI, and increases in convenience
stores have a statistically significant positive
effect on weight, though the point estimates on
the outlet density effects are very small.