Getting a healthy start: The effectiveness of targeted benefits for improving dietary choices

There is growing policy interest in encouraging better dietary choices. We study a nationally-implemented policy – the UK Healthy Start scheme – that introduced vouchers for fruit, vegetables and milk. We show that the policy has increased spending on fruit and vegetables and has been more effective than an equivalent-value cash benefit. We also show that the policy improved the nutrient composition of households' shopping baskets, with no offsetting changes in spending on other foodstuffs.