Many poor neighborhoods are close to a supermarket – 86 pct are within a mile, says Tufts associate professor Parke Wilde in his U.S. Food Policy blog. That’s a shorter distance than commonly thought and a shorter trip than faces higher-income people, according to research by Wilde and colleagues. Overwhelmingly, Americans drive if the store is not nearby.
“(T)his still leaves almost 5 pct of the population in these areas lacking both an automobile and a nearby supermarket,” write Parke, Joseph Llobrera, a postdoctoral scholar at Tufts, and Michele Ver Ploeg of USDA’s Economic Research Service in International Food and Agribusiness Management Review.