evaluation of the environmental impact of weekly food consumption in different socio economic households in australia using environmentally extended input output analysis this paper uses input output analysis to model the environmental impacts of the weekly food consumption of australia s households sorted by income quintile in 2003 we found that weekly food consumption of the relatively better off households caused greater environmental burden than that of the less well off household meat and bakery products flour cereals were the categories that contributed the largest share of environmental impacts in an average household s food consumption footprint 58 water 26 energy 29 co2 and 31 wasted materials per dollar spent fruit and vegetables generated 0 0874 m3 of water 0 0055 gj of energy 0 37 kg of co2 and 0 0114 kg of wasted materials this was lower than the per dollar impacts of bakery products 0 8482 0 0067 0 63 0 0204 meat 0 3471 0 0070 0 65 0 0203 dairy 0 0995 0 0114 0 98 0 0192 and edible fats 0 2373 0 0080 0 70 0 0165 eating out and fast food consumption also had a low per dollar impact 0 1317 0 0046 0 38 0 0141 we surmise that substituting fruit and vegetables at the expense of animal products processed foods and fats would decrease environmental impacts change at low income levels should be focused upon meat bakery and dairy consumption while higher incomes should be focused upon the consequences of eating food outside the home

environmental impacts of changes to healthier diets in europe food consumption causes together with mobility shelter and the use of electrical products most life cycle impacts of consumption meat and dairy are among the highest contributors to environmental impacts from food consumption a healthier diet might have less environmental impacts using the e3iot environmentally extended input output database developed in an eu study on environmental impacts of products eipro this paper estimates the difference in impacts between the european status quo and three simulated diet baskets i e a pattern according to universal dietary recommendations the same pattern with reduced meat consumption and a mediterranean pattern with reduced meat consumption production technologies protein and energy intake were kept constant though this implies just moderate dietary shifts impact reductions of up to 8 were possible in reduced meat scenarios the slightly changed food costs do not lead to significant first order rebound effects second order rebounds were estimated by applying the capri partial equilibrium model this analysis showed that european meat production sector will most likely respond by higher exports to compensate for losses on the domestic meat market higher impact reductions probably would need more drastic diet changes 2011 elsevier b v

labor market effects of september 11th on arab and muslim residents of the united states we investigated whether the september 11 2001 terrorists attacks had any effect on employment earnings and residential mobility of first and second generation arab and muslim men in the united states we find that september 11th did not significantly affect employment and hours of work of arab and muslim men but was associated with a 9 11 percent decline in their real wage and weekly earnings with some evidence that this decline was temporary the adverse earnings effects were strongly linked to hate crime incidence estimates also suggest that the terrorists attacks reduced intrastate migration of arab and muslim men

diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal us can we feed the animals in 2030 abstract the paper argues that current international projections of meat and feed demand may underestimate future consumption patterns for mainly two reasons demand projections are based on income extrapolation with an assumed demand elasticity and feed requirements per unit of meat are taken to be fixed instead we propose a structural specification that includes a dietary shift towards meat as per capita income increases and we account for a shift from traditional to cereal intensive feeding technologies our finding is that under the commonly assumed growth rates of per capita income world cereal feed demand will be significantly higher in the coming 30 years than is currently projected by international organizations even if we allow for price effects compared to other factors that are generally expected to affect the future world food situation the quantitative impact of the increased cereal feed demand greatly exceeds that of gmos and climate change in the coming three decades

the future of food scenarios and the effect on natural resource use in agriculture in 2050 do we have the natural resource base to feed future populations this study gives a quantification of global land use water use and fertilizer use for the year 2050 for a complete diet and four different futures agriculture will need to develop substantially to feed future populations it is shown that there is a negative correlation between fertilizer use and land use which makes the necessity of incorporating both in such assessments clear water use increases relative to total production and this is going to be a problem unless drastic measures are taken the high wastage and high consumption of animal products in the developed regions are major contributors to the total global demand developing countries aspirations to such practices are a major factor in increases in diet demand as are population increases in those regions in creating a more sustainable food system a one solution approach will not do and solutions should combine supply side and demand side options demand side solutions should target wastage and animal product consumption on the supply side technological development and better feeding efficiency will increase yields feeding the future global population which is necessary to increase living standards worldwide will require a concerted effort

willing consumers or locked in policies for a sustainable consumption postmodern explanations of consumer behaviour stress social and psychological factors to the neglect of explanations based on structural issues such as the working life conditions which favour a work and spend lifestyle the conditions of urban living or the effects of pervasive marketing this paper argues that consumers may not be so keen and willing but are rather locked in by circumstances some of these circumstances are deliberately created by other interests and a policy to limit consumption must look for adequate means over a large and varied field in the end shorter working hours may be an important key to a more sustainable future 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

are emily and greg more employable than lakisha and jamal a field experiment on labor market discrimination we study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help wanted ads in boston and chicago newspapers to manipulate perceived race resumes are randomly assigned african american or white sounding names white names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for white names than for african american ones the racial gap is uniform across occupation industry and employer size we also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the u s labor market jel j71 j64

customer racial discrimination in the market for memorabilia the case of baseball because consumer discrimination can reduce productivity it is often impossible to tell whether differential productivity is the effect of discrimination or of differential ability detailed data for the sports labor market make it possible to separate consumer discrimination from ability we use a unique approach to determine whether the entertainment value of baseball players is related to their race we examine whether race directly affects the value of a player in the market for baseball cards in contrast to studies that use salaries there is no room for owner or coworker discrimination our evidence supports the hypothesis of consumer discrimination

three perspectives on sustainable food security efficiency demand restraint food system transformation what role for life cycle assessment achieving food system sustainability is a global priority but there are different views on how it might be achieved broadly three perspectives are emerging defined here as efficiency oriented demand restraint and food system transformation these reflect different conceptualisations on what is practically achievable and what is desirable underpinned by different values and ideologies about the role of technology our relationship with nature and fundamentally what is meant by a good life this paper describes these emerging perspectives and explores their underlying values highlights lca s role in shaping these perspectives and considers how lca could be oriented to clarify thinking and advance policy relevant knowledge it argues that more work is needed to understand the values underlying different approaches to the food sustainability problem this can shed light on why stakeholders disagree where there are genuine misunderstandings and where common ground is possible and ways forward agreed

food and life cycle energy inputs consequences of diet and ways to increase efficiency food consumption is one of the most polluting everyday activities when impacts during product life cycles are considered greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector are substantial and need to be lowered to stabilise climate change here we present an inventory of life cycle energy inputs for 150 food items available in sweden and discuss how energy efficient meals and diets can be composed energy inputs in food life cycles vary from 2 to 220 mj per kg due to a multitude of factors related to animal or vegetable origin degree of processing choice of processing and preparation technology and transportation distance daily total life cycle energy inputs for diets with a similar dietary energy consumed by one person can vary by a factor of four from 13 to 51 mj current swedish food consumption patterns result in life cycle energy inputs ranging from 6900 to 21 000 mj per person and year choice of ingredients and gender differences in food consumption patterns explain the differences up to a third of the total energy inputs is related to snacks sweets and drinks items with little nutritional value it is possible to compose a diet compatible with goals for energy efficiency and equal global partition of energy resources however such a diet is far from the swedish average and not in line with current trends

the sensitivity of an empirical model of married women s hours of work to economic and statistical assumptions this study undertakes a systematic analysis of several theoretic and statistical assumption s used in many empirical models of female labor supply using a singl e data set psid 1975 labor supply data the author is able to replic ate most of the range of estimated income and substitution effects fo und in previous studies in this field he undertakes extensive specif ication tests and finds that most of this range should be rejected du e to statistical and model misspecifications the two most important assumptions appear to be the tobit assumption used to control for sel f selection into the labor force and exogeneity assumptions on the wi fe s wage rate and her labor market experience copyright 1987 by the econometric society

national natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept abstract there is a growing consensus among natural and social scientists that sustainability depends on maintaining natural capital however progress to put this ecological condition to practice has been slow not least because of the inability of making these objectives measurable therefore to overcome this obstacle assessment frameworks for natural capital are needed this study presents a simple framework for national and global natural capital accounting it demonstrates using the example of italy an accounting framework which tracks national economies energy and resource throughput and translates them into biologically productive areas necessary to produce these flows this calculation has been applied to over 52 countries with this framework based on the ecological footprint concept human consumption can be compared with natural capital production at the global and national level using existing data

assessing the effect of payroll taxes on formal employment the case of the 2012 tax reform in colombia in 2013 colombia implemented a tax reform that reduced payroll taxes by a total of 13 5 percentage points of wages this paper evaluates the effects of this component of the 2012 colombian tax reform on firms formal employment and average wages we construct a panel of firms based on their employees administrative records to account for the endogeneity of the treatment we use an instrumental variables technique that exploits the exogenous variation from the decisions of firms that are similar to each other in several dimensions but belong to different economic sectors based on our preferred specification we estimate a positive and significant increase in formal employment as a result of the implementation of the reform of approximately 213 000 jobs in existing pre reform firms in the long run these effects will increase to more than 600 000 jobs the effect of the reform on the average wages paid by firms was also found to be positive for some sizes of firms but the overall effect in the short run is rather small

are there dual labor markets in chile empirical evidence abstract in this paper we use a switching regression method to test the hypothesis that segmentation in the chilean labor market exists the results support the labor segmentation hypothesis and consequently they contradict those of corbo and stelcner 1983 the explanation for this is that we do not make any a priori definition of the population as corbo and stelcner do in fact our results show that any a priori definition of the sample will lead to rejecting the segmentation hypothesis

the bare necessities how much household carbon do we really need the consumption patterns of western nations are generally deemed to be unsustainable yet there is little attempt to restrain either material throughput or income growth nonetheless in the face of the need to make deep cuts in carbon emissions for instance consumption restraint may be a perfectly legitimate response this paper explores the potential for a reduced consumption scenario in the uk constructed by assuming that households achieve a specific minimum income standard which is deemed to provide a decent life for each household type the minimum income standards are taken from a recent study for the joseph rowntree foundation and include not only subsistence commodities such as food warmth and shelter but also the means to participate effectively in society the joseph rowntree foundation study produced detailed household expenditure budgets for these income standards the paper uses an environmentally extended quasi multi regional input output model to estimate the greenhouse gas ghg emissions required in the production and distribution of all goods and services purchased according to these budgets our results show that average household ghg emissions in the uk would be around 37 lower in the reduced consumption scenario than they are currently we explore several implications of these findings including the need to change social norms around consumption the need for investment to improve the thermal performance of homes and the need to develop new transport infrastructures we also address the potential to reduce emissions below the level achieved in this scenario and discuss the implications for policy

evidence on discrimination in employment codes of color codes of gender there is substantial racial and gender disparity in the american economy as we will demonstrate discriminatory treatment within the labor market is a major cause of this inequality the evidence is ubiquitous careful research studies that estimate wage and employment regressions help wanted advertisements audit and correspondence studies and discrimination suits that are often reported by the news media yet there appear to have been periods of substantial reductions in economic disparity and discrimination for example donohue and heckman provide evidence that racial discrimination declined during 1965 1975 1 gottschalk has produced statistical estimates that indicate that discrimination against black males dropped most sharply between 1965 and 1975 and that discrimination against women declined during the interval 1973 1994 2 but some unanswered questions remain why did the movement toward racial equality stagnate and eventually decline after the mid 1970s what factors are most responsible for the remaining gender inequality what is the role of the competitive process in the elimination or reproduction of discrimination in employment

trimming the excess environmental impacts of discretionary food consumption in australia abstract tackling the overconsumption of discretionary foods foods and drinks not necessary to provide the nutrients the body needs is central to aligning human and planetary health whilst the adverse health impacts of discretionary foods are well documented the environmental and broader sustainability impacts of these products deserve more attention especially since their consumption has been increasing in recent decades particularly amongst low income groups this paper presents a quantitative case study analysis of discretionary food consumption and the associated environmental impacts for households from different income groups in australia environmentally extended input output analysis is used to estimate the full life cycle environmental impacts of discretionary food consumption on the basis of household expenditures on average discretionary foods account for a significant 35 39 33 and 35 of the overall diet related life cycle water use energy use carbon dioxide equivalent and land use respectively these significant percentages provide further support for the need to incentivise diets that are both healthier and more sustainable including divestment from discretionary food products the study highlights the challenges ahead including the need for further research on food substitutions to minimise environmental and social impacts whilst maximising nutritional quality especially amongst poorer socioeconomic groups

environmental sustainability in agriculture diet matters abstract there is no agreement that diet matters for environmental sustainability in the agriculture sector much current agriculture is unsustainable and worsening the environmental impact of agriculture degrades natural capital e g loss of topsoil waste and pollution of water nutrient loss extinction of species cattle raising is one of the most damaging components of agriculture livestock now eat about half of global grain production there is limited scope for improving food supply and what scope there is will further damage the environment all means to improve nutrition especially for the poor will be needed as population increases one such means is to improve diets of the rich by eating lower down the food chain while most people in the world thrive on mainly grain based diets carnivory is high in oecd and is increasing in ldcs in order to reduce food wastage and to improve health and food availability a food conversion efficiency tax is proposed the least efficient converters pork beef would be highly taxed more efficient converters poultry eggs dairy would be moderately taxed most efficient converters ocean fish would be taxed lowest grain for human food would not be taxed while coarse grains might be modestly subsidized non food agriculture also would be taxed highest on tobacco and on starches destined for alcoholic beverages produced from land suitable for food production

labor market effects of payroll taxes in developing countries evidence from colombia abstract we use a panel of manufacturing plants from colombia to analyze how the rise in payroll tax rates over the 1980s and 1990s affected the labor market our estimates indicate that formal wages fall by between 1 4 and 2 3 as a result of a 10 rise in payroll taxes this less than full shifting is likely to be the result of weak linkages between benefits and taxes and the presence of downward wage rigidities in colombia because the costs of taxation are only partly shifted from employers to employees employment also falls our results indicate that a 10 increase in payroll taxes lowered formal employment by between 4 and 5 in addition we find some evidence of less shifting and larger disemployment effects for production than for nonproduction workers these results suggest that policies aimed at boosting the relative demand of less skilled workers by reducing social security taxes may be effective in latin american countries where minimum wages bind and benefits are often not directly lin

consumption patterns and their effects on land required for food abstract vast amounts of land are required for the production of food but the area suitable for growing crops is limited in this paper attention is paid to the relationship between food consumption patterns and agricultural land requirements land requirements per food item that were determined in a previous study are combined with data on the per capita food consumption of various food packages varying from subsistence to affluent leading to information on land requirements for food large differences could be shown in per capita food consumption and related land requirements while food consumption expenditure and the physical consumption of specific foods change rapidly over time a difference of a factor of two was found between the requirements for existing european food patterns while the land requirement for a hypothetical diet based on wheat was six times less than that for an existing affluent diet with meat it is argued that in the near future changes in consumption patterns rather than population growth will form the most important variable for total land requirements for food trends towards the consumption of foods associated with affluent lifestyles will bring with them a need for more land lifestyle changes changes in consumer behavior on a household level can be considered as powerful options to reduce the use of natural resources such as agricultural land

consumer discrimination and self employment self employment rates and incomes differ significantly by race we show that these differentials arise in markets with consumer discrimination and incomplete information about the price of the good and the race of the seller equilibrium income distributions have two properties mean black incomes are lower than mean white incomes and the returns to ability are lower for black than for white sellers able blacks therefore are less likely to self select into the self employment sector than able whites using the 1980 census data we find that observed racial differences in the self employment income distributions are consistent with the theoretical predictions

the rising disparity in the price of healthful foods 2004 2008 abstract nutrient dense foods that are associated with better health outcomes tend to cost more per kilocalorie kcal than do refined grains sweets and fats the price disparity between healthful and less healthful foods appears to be growing this study demonstrates a new method for linking longitudinal retail price data with objective nutrient based ratings of the nutritional quality of foods and beverages retail prices for 378 foods and beverages were obtained from major supermarket chains in the seattle wa for 2004 2008 nutritional quality was based on energy density kcal g and two measures of nutrient density calculated using the naturally nutrient rich nnr score and the nutrient rich foods index nrf9 3 food prices were expressed as 100 g edible portion and as 1000 kcal foods were stratified by quintiles of energy and nutrient density for analyses both measures of nutrient density were negatively associated with energy density and positively associated with cost per 1000 kcal the mean cost of foods in the top quintile of nutrient density was 27 20 1000 kcal and the 4 year price increase was 29 2 foods in the bottom quintile cost a mean of 3 32 1000 kcal and the 4 year price increase was 16 1 there is a growing price disparity between nutrient dense foods and less nutritious options cost may pose a barrier to the adoption of healthier diets and so limit the impact of dietary guidance nutrient profiling methods provide objective criteria for tracking retail prices of foods in relation to their nutritional quality and for guiding food and nutrition policy

diet and the distribution of environmental impact abstract this paper examines the relationship between scale and distribution issues it is argued that since achieving a sustainable scale requires economic activity to stay within biophysical limits considerations of equity should not be limited to the distribution of monetary measures such as income but should include the distribution of scarce environmental services as well in order to make this point this paper examines how differences in diet across populations lead to inequality in the distribution of environmental impact first the distribution of food consumption across the world s population is examined using national data next ecological footprints are estimated in order to ascertain how differences in diet affect the distribution of environmental impact the results show that the meat intensive diet enjoyed by many in the industrialized world leads to a greater degree of inequality in the use of environmental services than is apparent from examination of the distribution of food consumption across countries