Working Paper: NBER ID: w21126
Authors: Jessie Handbury; Ilya Rahkovsky; Molly Schnell
Abstract: Using novel data describing the healthfulness of household food purchases and the retail landscapes consumers face, we measure the role of access in explaining why wealthier and more educated households purchase healthier foods. We find that spatial differences in access, though significant, are small relative to spatial differences in the nutritional content of sales. Socioeconomic disparities in nutritional consumption exist even among households with equivalent access, and the healthfulness of household consumption responds minimally to improvements in local retail environments. Our results indicate that access-improving policies alone will eliminate less than one third of existing socioeconomic disparities in nutritional consumption.\nThis paper has been subsumed by the authors’ later combined work
Keywords: Food Deserts; Nutritional Disparities; Retail Access
JEL Codes: I12; I24; I3; R2; R3
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Access to healthy foods (I14) | Nutritional consumption disparities (I14) |
| Socioeconomic status (SES) (I24) | Nutritional consumption disparities (I14) |
| Access-improving policies (R28) | Socioeconomic disparities in nutritional consumption (P36) |
| Access to healthy foods (I14) | Healthfulness of household consumption (D10) |
| Same store purchases (L14) | Socioeconomic gap in healthfulness of food purchases (I14) |