Food Deserts: A Comparison of Rural and Urban Census Tracts

Food insecurity, or the limited availability and access to fresh food, leads to hunger and is a growing problem in the United States. In 2010, approximately one in seven US households (17.2 million households) were food insecure, the highest number ever recorded in the United States. This has devastating effects on child nutrition, causing challenges to learning and development. Households that lack food security are generally located in low-income neighborhoods and poor rural communities. These communities have limited access to fresh food (grocery stores, open food markets) because these food outlets are not located near these poor communities. Furthermore, these low-income communities often do not have access to convenient transportation to take them to these fresh food sources that are further away. The differences between poor urban and rural communities have not been thoroughly researched. According to Morton, Bitto, Oakland, and Sand in “Accessing food resources: Rural and urban patterns of giving and getting food”, 58% of low income and rural individuals have access to fresh food versus low income individuals that live in urban areas. This work analyzes the differences in food security between rural and urban counties in the United States, taking into account other factors such as income and transportation, to determine if low-income communities in urban neighborhoods are better off in accessing fresh food, than their rural counterparts