Health, Happiness and Consumption of Sugary Goods
| Author: | Bc. Klára Hanusová |
|---|---|
| Year: | 2020 - summer |
| Leaders: | Mgr. Milan Ščasný PhD. |
| Consultants: | |
| Work type: | Bachelors |
| Language: | English |
| Pages: | 90 |
| Awards and prizes: | |
| Link: | https://is.cuni.cz/webapps/zzp/detail/213772/ |
| Abstract: | Numerous studies have examined socio-economic and demographic determinants of sugar consumption, happiness, and life satisfaction. However, little is still known about association between sugar consumption on one side and happiness (or life satisfaction), on the other side, in particular, if we control for other key factors such as health, dietary patterns, or even addictive behaviour that all potentially affect both sugar consumption and life satisfaction. This thesis fills this research gap. Individual-level data obtained from the INHERIT multi-country survey are used to analyse these determinants in five European countries, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The analysis is relying on several econometric models for count and limited dependent variable data, including negative binomial, logit, multinomial logit, and bivariate probit. We found that younger, respondents with children, and in particular males are eating more portions of sugary goods. Higher consumption of sugary goods is also correlated with eating more meat and smoking, and bad health status, gastrointestinal disease in particular, that is likely consequence of these healthadverse habits. Many of the explanatory variables which are positively associated with sugar consumption, tend to have opposite relationship with both happiness and life satisfaction. Higher income makes people more satisfied and happy, however, its effect on consumption of sugary goods is not significant or weakly negative and only in one country. We do not find, however, that sugar consumption and life satisfaction (or happiness) are associated one to the other either way. Despite the fact happiness and life satisfaction have been used in the literature interchangeably, the two measure different concepts of life quality. In our study we found the two are strongly and positively correlated and are associated with similar factors. |
