The role of leisure consumption in nutritional inequalities

Many studies have documented that households with high social and economic status (SES) tend to adopt diets of better nutritional quality, ceteris paribus. To reduce these nutritional inequalities, we need to understand the underlying mechanisms. The aim of this project is to study the mechanisms behind this positive correlation between SES and diet quality. We build on recent work in sociology suggesting a causal mechanism: for low-income households, the consumption of tasty foods of poor nutritional quality compensate for a lack of leisure activities. In this project, we will jointly study leisure consumption, food quality and the SES of French households.