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{"definition": "Percentage of people in a county with low income and living more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store if in an urban area, or more than 10 miles from a supermarket or large grocery store if in a rural area.", "availableYears": "2015", "name": "Low income & low access to store (%), 2015", "units": "Percent", "shortName": "PCT_LACCESS_LOWI15", "geographicLevel": "County", "dataSources": "Data are from the 2017 report, Low-Income and Low-Supermarket-Access Census Tracts, 2010-2015 and the 2012 report, Access to Affordable and Nutritious Food: Updated Estimates of Distances to Supermarkets Using 2010 Data. In each of these reports, a directory of supermarkets and large grocery stores authorized to accept SNAP benefits was merged with Trade Dimensions' TDLinx directory of stores within the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, for the years 2010 and 2015. Stores met the definition of a supermarket or large grocery store if they reported at least $2 million in annual sales and contained all the major food departments found in a traditional supermarket, including fresh meat and poultry, dairy, dry and packaged foods, and frozen foods. The combined list of supermarkets and large grocery stores was converted into a GIS-usable format by geocoding the street address into store locations. Population data are reported at the block level from the 2010 Census of Population and Housing, while data on income in 2010 are drawn at the block group-level from the 2006-10 American Community Survey, and data on income in 2015 are drawn from the 2010-14 American Community Survey. These population data were aerially allocated down to 1/2-kilometer-square grids across the United States. For each 1/2-kilometer-square grid cell, the distance was calculated from its geographic center to the center of the grid cell with the nearest supermarket. Rural or urban status is designated by the Census Bureau's Urban Area definition. Low-income is defined as annual family income of less than or equal to 200 percent of the Federal poverty threshold based on family size. 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 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store in urban areas and more than 10 miles from a supermarket or large grocery store in rural areas was aggregated to the county level. That number was divided by the total number of individuals in the county to obtain the percentage of total population in the county that resided more than 1 or 10 miles from a supermarket."} |