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Limited access to healthy and affordable food may impede some Americans from achieving a healthy diet. ERS's Food Access Research Atlas (FARA) provides a measure of neighborhood access to healthy, affordable food for the entire Nation and allows users to map low-income and low-supermarket access census tracts for 2015 and compare the results with those for 2010. A census tract is a small statistical subdivision of a county that usually contains between 1,200 and 8,000 people but generally averages around 4,000 people.
The FARA mapping tool uses supermarkets, supercenters, and large grocery stores as proxies for stores that sell a wide variety of foods needed for a healthy diet at affordable prices. Two nationwide directories of these types of stores were combined to update the atlas for 2015. Drug stores, dollar stores, convenience stores, military commissaries, and club stores are excluded because these types of stores do not consistently offer a wide variety of healthy foods or they have restrictions on who can shop in the store or charge a membership fee.
Low-income status is determined based on a census tract's poverty rate or median family income using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2010-2014 American Community Survey. Low-supermarket access is characterized by the number and share of people at different...