Food Deserts: Myth or Reality?

Chen Zhen

Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2021, vol. 13, issue 1, 109-129

Abstract: In 2010, the White House announced the goal of eradicating food deserts—low-income neighborhoods without nearby supermarkets—in seven years. The efficacy of this initiative is premised on the presumption, mostly untested in 2010, that food deserts significantly contribute to health disparities in low-resourced communities. We synthesize the post-2010 line of research that seeks to establish causality in the relationship between food access and nutrition/health. All things considered, there is so far little evidence that food deserts have a causal effect of meaningful magnitude on health and nutrition disparities. The causes of diet quality disparity lie more on the side of food demand than on supply. Therefore, from the public health perspective, policies that lower the relative price of healthy food or change the "deep parameters" of preferences in favor of healthy food would be more appealing than eliminating food deserts.

Keywords: food deserts; diet quality; health disparities; obesity; Healthy Food Financing Initiative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-101620-080307
Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anr:reseco:v:13:y:2021:p:109-129

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.annualreviews.org/action/ecommerce

DOI: 10.1146/annurev-resource-101620-080307

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annual Review of Resource Economics from Annual Reviews Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by http://www.annualreviews.org ().