Food deserts are areas where people have limited access to healthy food. This study examined the demographic characteristics in areas with a lack of supermarkets, supercenters, and large grocery stores. The study found that high poverty areas were more likely to be food deserts.

Report Abstract:

“USDA’s Economic Research Service previously identified more than 6,500 food desert tracts in the United States based on 2000 Census and 2006 data on locations of supermarkets, supercenters, and large grocery stores. In this report, we examine the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of these tracts to see how they differ from other census tracts and the extent to which these differences influence food desert status. Relative to all other census tracts, food desert tracts tend to have smaller populations, higher rates of abandoned or vacant homes, and residents who have lower levels of education, lower incomes, and higher unemployment. Census tracts with higher poverty rates are more likely to be food deserts than otherwise similar low-income census tracts in rural and in very dense (highly populated) urban areas. For less dense urban areas, census tracts with higher concentrations of minority populations are more likely to be food deserts, while tracts with substantial decreases in minority populations between 1990 and 2000 were less likely to be identified as food deserts in 2000.”

Select Findings:

• “Areas with higher levels of poverty are more likely to be food deserts, but for other factors, such as vehicle availability and use of public transportation, the association with food desert status varies across very dense urban areas, less dense urban areas, and rural areas.”
• “Areas with higher poverty rates are more likely to be food deserts regardless of rural or urban designation. This result is especially true in very dense urban areas where other population characteristics such as racial composition and unemployment rates are not predictors of food desert status because they tend to be similar across tracts.”
• “In all but very dense urban areas, the higher the percentage of minority population, the more likely the area is to be a food desert.”
• “Residents in the Northeast are less likely to live far from a store than their counterparts in other regions of the country with similar income levels.”
• “Rural areas experiencing population growth are less likely to be food deserts.”