Perceived Barriers to Purchasing Healthy Foods vs. Access in Underserved Areas across the Northeast

In the U.S., many households are unable to meet their dietary needs for leading an active and healthy lifestyle. Research has focused on assessing community-level constraints and opportunities to access health and nutritious food for low-income and disadvantaged populations. Our aim is to investigate how community-level constraints relate to the perceived barriers to purchasing healthy foods. Probit regressions are performed where the probability of declaring a specific barrier to purchasing more healthy food (or no barrier) is regressed on the respondents’ demographic characteristics and on the zip code level food store location variables. Understanding the barriers that exist to purchasing healthy foods for consumers living in underserved areas can have a considerable impact on current policy discussions