New developments in fruit and vegetables consumption in the period 1999-2004 in Denmark - a quantile regression approach

The development in the consumption of fruit and

vegetables in the period 1999-2004 in Denmark was

investigated using quantile regression and two previously

overlooked problems were identified. First, the change in the

ten percent quantile samples decreased. This could have been

caused by changes in the distribution of covariates. Therefore,

the counterfactual decomposition of Machado and Mata (2005)

was used and the methodology established that the change was

not caused by alterations in the distribution of covariates but

by changes in the coefficients and therefore a change in

behaviour. The reason for this development is probably due to

low income groups becoming relatively more income

constrained since the gap to the high income group have grown

considerably at the lower end of the distribution. The second

problem was that the education inducing gap became larger in

2004 indicating that uneducated people have not responded as

well to the health related information flow. These results

suggest that information campaigns have not been as

successful as previously thought; more importantly the results

indicate that information campaigns alone will do a poor job in

solving the identified problems. Other instruments targeting

uneducated and low income groups more directly are needed.

Instruments which make fruit and vegetables relatively

cheaper would undoubtedly have an effect on low income

groups and send a strong signal to the uneducated population.