The Spatial Context of Food Assistance: Examining Local Food Assistance Environment in the Context of SNAP

ABSTRACT

We develop the concept of the local food assistance environment to examine how spatial access to different local food assistance resources might shape food assistance program participation. Using unique survey data capturing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation in metropolitan Detroit, we explore how spatial access to local food assistance resources (e.g., SNAP offices, food retailers, charitable food assistance programs) may be associated with SNAP receipt. Descriptive analyses find that closer proximity to food assistance resources and retailers who accept food assistance benefits is positively associated with self-reported SNAP receipt.

KEYWORDS:

• Food assistance
• poverty
• food security
• SNAP

Acknowledgments

We thank Sarah Burgard, Sheldon Danziger, Tedi Engler, Italo Gutierrez, Colleen Heflin, Heather D. Hill, Chieko Maene, Leann Down, and Luke Shaefer for their assistance and comments on the project.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website

Notes

1. For context, the federal poverty threshold in 2010 for a two adult household with two children was $22,113.³²

2. Research suggests that household residential choice is shaped by racial and ethnic discrimination and search process barriers, as well as a host of other considerations such as proximity to economic opportunity, housing affordability, school quality, and racial or ethnic diversity [see.^33–40].

3. Rates of public program receipt have been benchmarked against 2009 Current Population Survey data for the three-county Metropolitan Detroit area. We find reported rates of program participation to be very similar between the MRRS and the March 2010 CPS. Ideally, we would be able to link administrative data to survey records, but this is not possible in the MRRS. Administrative data provides a more accurate snapshot of caseloads and program output than survey data, which in the aggregate tends to provide under-estimates of enrollment in SNAP, see.⁴¹

4. The MRRS includes a health limitation measure used in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that reflects whether respondents “have any health problem or disability which prevents you from working or which limits the kind or amount of work you can do?”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research and the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) RIDGE Center for National Food and Nutrition Assistance Research; Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation, U. S. Department of Health and Human Services; the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Michigan; the Ford Foundation; and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of any of our project funders.