The Relationship between Supermarket Concentration and the Shopping Habits of the Urban Poor: a Prepared Foods Example

This paper adds to the literature on household prepared food purchasing behavior of urban households by analyzing price, income, shopping environment, and demographic data. A nationally representative dataset was used to determine which geographic, health, economic and demographic factors effected households’ expenditures at grocery stores. A logit model was used to determine both urban poor and urban non-poor households’ probability of purchasing prepared foods. Both urban populations’ prepared food purchasing behaviors were found to be unresponsive to household income and prepared food price changes. The healthfulness of prepared food items does not affect households’ probability of purchasing prepared food items. Additional variables that are significantly related to the purchase of prepared foods include: distance to a grocery store, percentage of households that are minorities, the number of trips per week to the grocery store, and female headed households that were employed.