IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ajagec/v98y2016i1p19-40..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Food Deserts on Food Insufficiency and SNAP Participation among the Elderly

Author

Listed:
  • Katie Fitzpatrick
  • Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley
  • Michele Ver Ploeg

Abstract

Residents of neighborhoods with limited access to grocery stores may face barriers to obtaining adequate food for a healthy diet. Low-income elderly may be uniquely affected by these so-called "food deserts" due to limited transportation options, strong attachments to local neighborhoods, fixed incomes, and physical limitations for food shopping. Using 2006 and 2010 Health and Retirement Study data linked to census tract-level measures of food deserts, this study measures whether living in a food desert affects food and material hardship, participation in food assistance programs, and the food spending of elderly adults. In both cross-sectional and fixed effects regressions of elderly residents of urban counties, we find little evidence that living in a food desert affects these outcomes. We find, however, that individuals residing in a food desert without a vehicle are 12 percentage points more likely to report food insufficiency. Those SNAP recipients living in food deserts are 11 percentage points more likely to receive subsidized meals, while nonparticipants in food deserts and SNAP recipients outside of food deserts are less likely to receive subsidized meals. Our findings suggest that seniors without vehicles and SNAP recipients in food deserts may be the most vulnerable to limited food store access.

Suggested Citation

  • Katie Fitzpatrick & Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley & Michele Ver Ploeg, 2016. "The Impact of Food Deserts on Food Insufficiency and SNAP Participation among the Elderly," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(1), pages 19-40.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:98:y:2016:i:1:p:19-40.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ajae/aav044
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stacy Dickert‐Conlin & Katie Fitzpatrick & Brian Stacy & Laura Tiehen, 2021. "The Downs and Ups of the SNAP Caseload: What Matters?," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(3), pages 1026-1050, September.
    2. Xu, Lei & Plakias, Zoë, 2022. "The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Food Insecurity, and Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in Appalachian Ohio," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322370, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Di Fang & Michael R. Thomsen & Rodolfo M. Nayga & Wei Yang, 2022. "Food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from a survey of low-income Americans," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 14(1), pages 165-183, February.
    4. Bergmans, Rachel S. & Wegryn-Jones, Riley, 2020. "Examining associations of food insecurity with major depression among older adults in the wake of the Great Recession," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    5. Fitzpatrick, Katie & Greenhalgh-Stanley, Nadia & Ver Ploeg, Michele, 2019. "Food deserts and diet-related health outcomes of the elderly," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 1-1.
    6. Villas-Boas, Sofia B & Taylor, Rebecca, 2016. "Store Choice among Low Income Households," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt33z409dq, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    7. Cäzilia Loibl & Alec P. Rhodes & Stephanie Moulton & Donald Haurin & Chrisse Edmunds, 2022. "Food insecurity among older adults in the U.S.: The role of mortgage borrowing," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(2), pages 549-574, June.
    8. Sanghyo Kim & Kyei-Im Lee & Seong-Yoon Heo & Seung-Chul Noh, 2020. "Identifying Food Deserts and People with Low Food Access, and Disparities in Dietary Habits and Health in Korea," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-21, October.
    9. Joel Cuffey & Timothy K. M. Beatty, 2022. "Effects of competing food desert policies on store format choice among SNAP participants," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 104(4), pages 1485-1511, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:98:y:2016:i:1:p:19-40.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.