Fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with improved health outcomes,yet there is limited understanding of the impact of cost and accessibilityon fruit and vegetable intake in rural settings. This study examines therelationship between the consumption of fruits and vegetables and their costand accessibility among blacks and non-Hispanic whites in a rural area.Individual characteristics from a 2006 mail survey (n = 1,510) were combinedwith store locations and price information from a 2006 ground-truthed censusof retail outlets. The mail survey covered seven counties in central Texaswith 38 supermarkets/grocery stores. Blacks tended to live closer to asupermarket or grocery store, but they were only slightly more likely thanwhites to consume two or more servings of fruit daily and much less likelyto consume three or more servings of vegetables. Multivariate probitregression analysis revealed that neither access nor cost was related tofruit or vegetable consumption among white respondents. Among blacks, costwas also not associated with consumption. In contrast to whites, however,each additional mile was associated with a three percentage point decline inthe probability of consuming two or more servings of fruit daily and a 1.8percentage point decline in the probability of consuming three or morevegetable servings.

The effectiveness of the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program in achieving its goals at the national, regional, and state level is unknown. Using US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data from all states and territories for the years 2000-2006, the impact of program and participant characteristics and returns to scale on the three outcome indicators used by the USDA are estimated. Program and participant characteristics do not seem to be as important as the amount of money spent on the program. Generally speaking, there are constant and increasing returns to scale for two of the three federal outcome indices for most states but not all.

This research empirically examines the relationship between economic development and the progression of economic thought. It is based on three propositions: 1) economic development progresses by long waves, 2) long waves induce a cyclical pattern of general entrepreneurial and managerial socio-economic behavior, and 3) economists pursue alternating periods of revolutionary and normal economic science as part of the general socio-economic pattern of behavior. The general hypothesis of this study is that prosperity periods induce economic thought concerned with maintaining the status quo (Kuhnian normal science) and depressionary periods induce the development of new theories (Kuhnian revolutionary science). The specific hypothesis is that long waves generate a cyclical pattern in the average age of journal article citations. This hypothesis is supported when tested with a random sampling of articles published in the American Economic Review from 1911 to 1987.