Neighborhood Food Insecurity Index to Identify Food Vulnerability and Food Deserts in the United States

Abstract

The USDA’s definition of food deserts, which is based on the distance to store and a neighborhood’s income, seems to be inadequate to explain the food security status of a neighborhood. Thus, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to explore the underlying structures behind the 11 measures of a neighborhood's characteristics, which, in turn, describes a neighborhood's food insecurity. The studied neighborhoods were the census tracts in the lower 48 states of the U.S. The EFA systematically grouped the 11 characteristics into two factors (i.e., socioeconomic and demographic) determining neighborhood vulnerability. Both factors suggest that the neighborhoods in the South have a high vulnerability that could influence the number and type of food stores or prospects of new food stores in those neighborhoods. Based on the factor structure revealed by the EFA, the Neighborhood Food Insecurity Index (NFII) was created. The NFII measures the relative food vulnerability of every U.S. census tract affecting its residents' ability to access a healthy food provider. The index indicates that about 43 million (13.14%) people in the U.S. live in neighborhoods with high food vulnerability. The index also shows that regionally, the South had the greatest percentage of populations living in high food-vulnerable neighborhoods followed by the West, Midwest, and Northeast regions.