Depression and grocery shopping behavior

Abstract

Depression is a chronic mental illness that has been found to affect economic activity such as labor supply. This paper presents the first correlations between depression, treatment, and shopping behavior. The existence (or lack thereof) of such correlations is informative with regards to the economic impacts of depression as well as consumer choice modeling. Our analysis uses a large survey panel which connects household shopping behavior with individual health information. In these data, 16% of individuals report suffering from depression and over 30% of households have at least one member who reports suffering from depression. Households with a member suffering from depression spend less overall; visit grocery stores less often and convenience stores more often; and spend a smaller share of their baskets on fresh produce and alcohol, a larger share on tobacco, and similar shares on unhealthy snacks. These cross-sectional correlations hold within counties and the subsample of single-member households. However, the correlations are considerably moderated when demographic controls are included and disappear completely when looking exclusively within households. Shopping behavior is also unchanged following the take-up of antidepressant treatment. These results imply that household-specific factors apart from depression likely drive the cross-sectional correlations. Additionally, these results provide some reassurance that, as long as the researcher has access to panel data, widespread depression does not undermine choice models.