C. Ford RungeNobel Conference 61

C. Ford Runge

Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota

The Impacts of Policy on Sugar Buying Behavior

If you think you’ve imagined that young people are drinking more sugar-based carbonated drinks, you’re not dreaming. Called “sugar-sweetened beverages” or SSBs in research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that every day, more than a third of our young people (12 to 17-year-olds) consume one or two SSBs, and a third take in more than two. “Well,” you think, “So what? Who doesn’t love an icy soda as a pick-me-up?” Research has consistently found that our bodies do not love it. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) routinely finds that youth SSB consumption contributes to a gamut of persistently poor health outcomes: obesity, Type-2 diabetes, heart disease, non-alcohol-related liver disease, tooth decay with cavities, and a form of arthritis called gout. Although these health outcomes disproportionately burden all youth, such impacts are concentrated disproportionately among non-Hispanic Black youth, and across lower socioeconomic sectors; these are clear signs that lowering SSB consumption has an urgent ethical imperative. 

One impactful research effort toward lowering and reversing youth SSB consumption comes from economics: How much are you willing to shell out for your mid-afternoon jolt of caffeine and sugar? What if you knew that the beverage was being heavily taxed as a way to offset the negative health effects of SSBs? Can we use incentives and disincentives--those ubiquitous economic levers--to change consumption patterns?

Economist C. Ford Runge and a multidisciplinary group of researchers thought so. Their research suggested you’ll be less likely to buy that SSB if you’re told that the rise in price is linked to a health-related aim, such as offsetting healthcare costs, than if you’re given no reason for the rise. Specifically, messaging that your price increase helps protect kids and helps lower obesity rates contributed to lower SSB purchases. 

The paper is one example of Runge’s research on the ways in which incentives and disincentives can affect our buying and consuming behaviors. This set of findings suggests that hitting us in the wallet, when we know it’s for our own good, can encourage us to reconsider our relationship to sugary drinks and change our buying behavior. 

For much of his career, Ford Runge has studied food and agriculture, examining population-level or policy-level impacts on consumption, health, and hunger. One recent strand of that work examines the impact of food policy on particular populations, of which the sweetened beverage study is one example. An earlier body of research examined the “food versus fuel” debate that arose in response to the move to create ethanol from cellulosic plants such as corn and sugarcane. An often-cited 2008 paper in Foreign Affairs magazine was titled “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.” A third strand of food-related research has focused on food insecurity. 

The throughstory across Runge’s research is an interrogation of policies’ everyday impacts on consumers, particularly those who are vulnerable or traditionally marginalized. Whether the topic is agricultural policy, dispersion and labeling of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in our food, or climate implications for global food production, Runge asks the big questions in his research. 

Runge is the recipient of both Rhodes and Fulbright fellowships. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. C. Ford Runge is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota. He earned his PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin.