Updated ERS Atlas allows users to map low-income and low-supermarket access areas

Limited access to healthy and affordable food may impede some Americans from achieving a healthy diet. ERS’s Food Access Research Atlas provides a common measure of neighborhood access to healthy, affordable food for the entire Nation. The Atlas allows users to map low-income and low-supermarket access census tracts for 2015 and compare the results with those for 2010. Individuals can choose four measures of low-supermarket access based on residents’ distances from the nearest supermarket (more than 0.5 or 1 mile in urban areas or more than 10 or 20 miles in rural areas) and vehicle access. One measure considers a tract to be low-income and low-access if it is low-income and contains a substantial number of vehicle-less households that live more than 0.5 miles from the nearest supermarket. Using this measure, the number of low-income and low-access census tracts in Wayne County, Michigan, rose 35 percent from 2010 to 2015. Twenty-two percent of Wayne County households lived in these tracts in 2015, and 4 percent of them lived more than 0.5 miles from a supermarket and did not have a vehicle. This map was created using ERS’s Food Access Research Atlas, updated January 17, 2017.