Supermarket access in lower-income areas
The Brookings Institute and The Reinvestment Fund, a community reinvestment group, released a video detailing supermarket access in 10 metro areas. The video, “Getting to Market,” is also accompanied by TRF’s PolicyMap widget, which enables users to find areas where food access is a problem and generate reports about those areas.
The analysis considers factors beyond distance in the attempt to identify “food desserts, ” including factors like a community’s population density and car ownership within a community. Across the 10 metro areas, which range in size from Jackson, Miss. to Los Angeles, about 5 percent of the total population live in areas underserved by supermarkets.
The report, released October 2010, urges economic developers, neighborhood organizations and retailers to pinpoint areas of low food access as a first step toward reducing market obstacles to food options that are better and less expensive for residents of vulnerable communities.
This article appeared on the Journalism Center on Children & Families website on November 16th, 2010.