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Abstract
How does one’s food environment affect food purchase decisions? Food access has received significant
political and academic attention, particularly under the Obama administration. Existing literature on food access
and “food deserts” mainly focuses on geographic distance or the retail of fresh fruits & vegetables versus fast food
within a neighborhood to determine and identify inequitable access. In this paper I attempt to develop an
endogenous measure of food access by asking how geographic placement of food retail affects food expenditure,
particularly of fruits & vegetables. I use novel data on 886 households matched to food prices from a census of
geocoded food retailers in Champaign County to approach this question from two perspectives. I first estimate the
household’s share of grocery expenditures allocated to fresh, frozen, and canned fruits & vegetables versus other
grocery items. I then use data on a person’s residence and geocoded data on food retail locations in Champaign
County to test for relationships between retailer proximity, and the share of expenditure on fruits & vegetables.
The next perspective uses a choice experiment to measure the tradeoff among store characteristics that determine
where a consumer shops. The demand estimation reveals how much fruits & vegetables a person is actually
consuming, while the choice experiment reveals whether that individual is constrained in their consumption by
their existing characteristic set of stores. I find that while proximity to a grocery store is positively correlated with
healthier food consumption, policy response should focus on improving store quality and product quality to induce
behavioral change. I further find policy response should be cognizant of endogenous locational sorting which may
require alternative means to improve health other than changing the food geography.