The dietary impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
Open accessAbstract
The COVID-19 pandemic led to significant changes in people's budgets, the opportunity cost of their time, and where they can purchase and consume food. We use novel data on food and non-alcoholic drink purchases from stores, takeaways, restaurants and other outlets to estimate the impact of the pandemic on the diets of a large, representative panel of British households. We find that a substantial and persistent increase in calories consumed at home more than offset reductions in calories eaten out. Households increased total calories relative to pre-pandemic by 280 per adult per day from March to July 2020, and by 150 from July to the end of 2020. Although quantity increased, there was little change in diet quality over the pandemic. All socioeconomic groups increased their calorie intake, with the largest rises for the highest SES households and the smallest for retired ones. We estimate that the changes could increase the proportion of adults who are overweight by at least five percentage points, two years after the pandemic onset.
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The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacts human capital through its negative effect on adolescent mental health.
“Furthermore, because of the importance of mental health as a component of human capital (Goldsmith et al., 1997; Graff and Neidell, 2013), our findings suggest a negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on human capital (O’Connell et al., 2022).”
From COVID-19 pandemic and adolescent mental health in China: Micro evidence and socioeconomic mechanisms (2022) · cites this paper as O’Connell et al., 2022
The Introduction says mental health deteriorated during the pandemic, citing Banks and Xu (2020). It does not address adolescent mental health or link mental health to human capital; the paper’s own analysis concerns diet and related health outcomes. (LLM, conf=0.78)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe DID model is one of the classic methods to evaluate the effect of exogenous shocks, events, or policies, widely employed in social science.
“The DID model is one of the classic methods to evaluate the effect of exogenous shocks, events, or policies, which is widely employed in social science (e.g., O’Connell et al., 2022; Zhao et al., 2022; Zhao and Yan, 2022).”
From COVID-19 pandemic and adolescent mental health in China: Micro evidence and socioeconomic mechanisms (2022) · cites this paper as O’Connell et al., 2022
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- Authors
- O’Connell, M., Smith, K., & Stroud, R.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Institute for Fiscal Studies (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Smith, Kate
- Venue
- Journal of Health Economics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-07
- Volume
- 84
- Pages
- 102641
- ISSN
- 0167-6296 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9159790
- OpenAlex
- W4281785406
- Cited by
- 53
- References
- 50
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 10
- FWCI
- 7.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Health Economics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Nuffield Foundation
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-20-ORAR-0008)
- Economic and Social Research Council (ES/P008909/1, ES/V003968/1, ES/V013513/1, ES/T014334/1)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets
- Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic, dietary change, energy intake, eating at home, eating out, food purchasing, non-alcoholic beverages, diet quality, socioeconomic disparities, overweight, household food expenditure, British households
- MeSH terms
- COVID-19, Adult, Energy Intake, Diet, Food, Humans, Pandemics
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