Cuffey & Beatty: Food Deserts and Store Choices

In Effects of Competing Food Desert Policies on Store Format Choice Among SNAP Participants, authors Joel Cuffey (Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Auburn University) and Timothy K. M. Beatty (Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California – Davis) evaluate how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants respond to various policy efforts designed to improve access to quality, healthy foods.

The focus here is store format: When and why do SNAP participants choose to shop at retail groceries that stock healthy food compared to other store formats, such as convience stores that may not have the same healthy options?

In particular, the authors compares the effect of supply-side policy innovations (increasing the supply of grocery stores) to demand-side policy approaches (increasing SNAP benefits) for improving diet quality among SNAP participants.

It turns out that little is known about how SNAP participants make choices about food access and, more specifically, where they shop. Households must trade off convenience, variety, and prices when deciding.

In this study, the authors use novel SNAP administrative data over three fiscal years in a large metropolitan area to compare different policy approaches, create hypothetical scenarios of their own, and examine the effect of other factors on store format choice. The authors consider factors such as available store formats, car ownership, age, and race to try to decipher what motivates these decisions for SNAP participants.

This study finds that both supply-side changes (new stores) and demand-side policies (increased SNAP benefits) impact store choice, but in complex and somewhat ambiguous ways. For example, new grocery store openings in close geographic proximity to home are most impactful for SNAP households without cars who live in food deserts. This underlines important transportation infrastructure concerns.

The authors also argue, based on these results, that if policymakers want to increase total SNAP spending at grocery stores, compared to convenience stores and other formats, then increasing benefits achieves this aim cost effectively.

Although this article focuses on an urban area, food deserts are a common occurrence of rural areas and communities. This article sheds insight into how different approaches to this issue, from type of policy, household car ownership status, choice of store formats, and more can play into the nutrition choices of rural SNAP participants.