Inter- and intra-racial/ethnic disparities in walking accessibility to grocery stores

Abstract

Inequalities in accessibility to grocery stores can lead to disparate health outcomes among the population. Although existing studies have examined grocery accessibility inequality across income and racial/ethnic groups, little research has been dedicated to revealing the intra-racial disparities of grocery accessibility and comparing inter-racial and intra-racial inequalities in grocery accessibility. This study adopts a modified two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method, which accounts for the supply/demand inflation effect, and an alternative distribution inequality metric called the Palma ratio to measure the inequalities in grocery access between the richest 10% and poorest 40% of the census tracts within the same racial/ethnic group in Chicago (USA). The results indicate that in Chicago, inter-racial inequality in grocery accessibility is more serious than intra-racial inequality, especially because the Hispanic-majority census tracts generally suffer from low grocery accessibility regardless of their income levels.