Fast-food Consumption and the Ban on Advertising Targeting Children: The Quebec Experience1

With growing concerns about childhood obesity and the associated health risks, several countries are considering banning advertising directed at the children. In this paper we study the e¤ect of a ban on advertizing to children imposed in the Canadian province of Quebec in 1980 on fastfood purchase propensity and expenditures. Fastfood is not only one of the most highly advertised product categories but also is asociated with obesity, particularly among children. Using data from the Canadian food expenditure survey from 1984 to 1992, we ask whether fast food expenditure is lower in those groups a¤ected by the ban compared to those who are not. We use a triple di¤erence-in-di¤erence methodology, noting that Anglophone households, due to their access to media outside the province, are less likely to be a¤ected by the ban than Francophone households. We also use French and English-speaking households in Ontario, and households without children in both provinces, as control groups. We …nd evidence that the ban reduced fast food expenditure, leading to between 11 and 22 million fewer fast food meals eaten per year, which losely translates to 2.2 to 4.4 billion fewer calories consumed. As a robustness check, we use the matching estimator developed by Abadie and Imbens (2006) and …nd the estimates to be consistent with the initial estimates using di¤erence in di¤erence methodology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the …rst study to explore the e¤ect of advertising ban on this speci…c expenditure.