PolicyLink and PERE
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An Equity Profile of Orange County
Analysis of access to healthy food
Analysis of low-income, low food access is
from the United States Department of
Agriculture Food Access Research Atlas.
USDA defines low-income as individuals
whose annual family income is at or below
200 percent of the federal poverty threshold
for a particular family size.
In the Food Access Research Atlas, low access
to healthy food is defined as being far from a
supermarket. An individual is considered to
have low access if they live more than ½ mile
from the nearest supermarket for urban areas
or more than 10 miles from the nearest
supermarket for rural areas.
The specific measure mapped in this profile is
the percentage of the tract population that
has low-income and lives more than ½ mile
from the nearest supermarket
The data used to compile this measure are
from the 2017 Food Access Research Atlas
report. A directory of supermarkets,
supercenters, and large grocery stores within
the United States, including Alaska and
Data and methods
Hawaii, was derived from merging the 2015
STARS directory of stores authorized to
accept SNAP benefits and the 2015 Trade
Dimensions TDLinx directory of stores.
Block-level population data from the 2010
Census of Population and Housing and block-
group level income data from the 2010-14
American Community Survey were aerially
allocated down to ½-kilometer-square grids
across the United States. For each ½-
kilometer-square grid cell, the distance was
calculated from its geographic center to the
center of the grid cell with the nearest
supermarket.
Once distance to the nearest supermarket or
large grocery store was calculated for each
grid cell, the number of low-income
individuals living more than ½ mile from a
supermarket or large grocery store was
aggregated to the tract level and then divided
by the total number of individuals in the tract
to obtain the percentage of the total
population in the tract with low-income that
resided more than ½ mile from a supermarket.
For more information on the Food Access
Research Atlas visit:
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-
products/food-access-research-atlas/ .
