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{"definition": "Percentage of seniors (age > 64) in a county 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": "Seniors, low access to store (%), 2015", "units": "Percent", "shortName": "PCT_LACCESS_SENIORS15", "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, including age, are reported at the block level from the 2010 Census of Population and Housing. 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. Seniors are counted as individuals age 65 or older. Once distance to the nearest supermarket or large grocery store was calculated for each grid cell, the number of seniors in housing units more than 1 mile from the nearest 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 seniors in the county to obtain the percentage of seniors in the county that were in households more than 1 or 10 miles from a supermarket."} |