Communities With Limited Food Access in the United States

Updated May 27, 2025 | Posted February 13, 2021
By the Annie E. Casey Foundation
Food desert data shows that nearly 39.5 million people were living in low-income and low-access areas

What Is a Food Desert?

Neigh­bor­hoods with lim­it­ed food access — some­times called food deserts” — are geo­graph­ic areas where res­i­dents have few to no con­ve­nient options for secur­ing afford­able and healthy foods, espe­cial­ly fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles. Neigh­bor­hoods with lim­it­ed access to high-qual­i­ty food can cre­ate extra, every­day hur­dles that make it hard­er for kids and fam­i­lies to grow healthy and strong. When peo­ple have bet­ter access to super­mar­kets, for exam­ple, they are more like­ly to have nutri­tious diets and low­er rates of chron­ic dis­ease, accord­ing to research.

Redefin­ing Food Deserts: Evolv­ing the Lan­guage Around Food Access

Experts, researchers and gov­ern­ment agen­cies are increas­ing­ly rec­og­niz­ing the lim­i­ta­tions of the term food desert when refer­ring to neigh­bor­hoods with lim­it­ed food access. Among the lim­i­ta­tions iden­ti­fied, the term: 

  • incor­rect­ly sug­gests that the pri­ma­ry prob­lem is about the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment, such as dis­tance to food, rather than inten­tion­al deci­sions that have led to lim­it­ed gro­cery stores in low-income communities;
  • nei­ther acknowl­edges nor cap­tures aspects of the issue, such as food afford­abil­i­ty, store hours and cul­tur­al accept­abil­i­ty of food; and
  • does not acknowl­edge food qual­i­ty and the high preva­lence of unhealthy foods in con­ve­nience stores in urban, low-income neighborhoods.

More descrip­tive, thought­ful lan­guage can help pro­mote solu­tions that go beyond the built envi­ron­ment and address under­ly­ing issues.

Where Are Food Deserts in America?

Among the states with the great­est share of res­i­dents liv­ing in food deserts in the Unit­ed States, nine of the top 10 are locat­ed in the South, accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Agriculture’s Food Access Research Atlas. Mis­sis­sip­pi ranks first, with 30% of its res­i­dents liv­ing in a food desert, fol­lowed by 29% of New Mexico’s pop­u­la­tion and 26% of Arkansas’s pop­u­la­tion. States in the North­east, includ­ing New York (4%), Rhode Island (5%) and Ver­mont (5%) are among the least like­ly to have res­i­dents liv­ing in food deserts.

At the city lev­el, 32% of the res­i­dents in Mem­phis are clas­si­fied as liv­ing in a food desert. No oth­er large metro city has a greater share of its pop­u­la­tion affect­ed. One local non­prof­it is fight­ing back with a 44-foot-long refrig­er­at­ed trail­er. Called The Mobile Gro­cer, this mini super­mar­ket-on-wheels trav­els to dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hood food deserts. It arrives packed with afford­able gro­ceries — includ­ing fresh pro­duce — and helps to feed thou­sands of Mem­phis res­i­dents each week.

San Anto­nio is home to the nation’s sec­ond-high­est rate of res­i­dents liv­ing in food deserts (26%, tied with River­side, Cal­i­for­nia). The city’s Healthy Cor­ner Store Pro­gram part­ners with small neigh­bor­hood cor­ner stores. Today, the pro­gram spans a net­work of over 45 stores work­ing to fill in San Antonio’s gro­cery gaps.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, lim­it­ed access to food is more com­mon in:

  • com­mu­ni­ties with high­er rates of pover­ty, whether rur­al or urban;
  • Neigh­bor­hoods with greater shares of peo­ple of col­or; and
  • rur­al Amer­i­can Indi­an or Alas­ka Native communities.

A 2022 study exam­ined U.S. cen­sus tracts by race and eth­nic­i­ty, pover­ty lev­el and access to qual­i­ty food stores. It found that high-pover­ty, non-white — par­tic­u­lar­ly Black — neigh­bor­hoods con­tin­ue to have the least access to super­mar­kets.

Fur­ther, a 2023 analy­sis found that, in the most remote parts of the coun­try, Amer­i­can Indi­an and Alas­ka Native pop­u­la­tions were heav­i­ly over-rep­re­sent­ed in areas with lim­it­ed super­mar­ket access.

How Are Com­mu­ni­ties Iden­ti­fied as Food Deserts in the Unit­ed States?

Researchers con­sid­er a vari­ety of fac­tors when iden­ti­fy­ing these neigh­bor­hoods, including:

  • access to healthy food in local stores, as mea­sured by dis­tance to super­mar­kets or large gro­cery stores or by the num­ber of stores in an area;
  • house­hold resources, includ­ing fam­i­ly income and/​or vehi­cle avail­abil­i­ty; and
  • neigh­bor­hood resources, such as the aver­age income of res­i­dents and the avail­abil­i­ty of pub­lic transportation.

The USDA iden­ti­fies such com­mu­ni­ties as low-income, low-access” cen­sus tracts, accord­ing to the fol­low­ing definitions:

  • Low-income cen­sus tracts: pover­ty rate of at least 20% or a medi­an fam­i­ly income at or below 80% of the statewide or met­ro­pol­i­tan area medi­an fam­i­ly income.
  • Low-access cen­sus tracts: At least 500 peo­ple or 33% of res­i­dents live more than one mile in urban areas or more than 10 miles in rur­al areas from the near­est super­mar­ket or large gro­cery store. (The USDA mea­sures access using oth­er dis­tances as well.)

The over­lap­ping low-income and low-access cen­sus tracts rep­re­sent com­mu­ni­ties with the great­est poten­tial dif­fi­cul­ties in obtain­ing nutri­tious food. The USDA also mea­sures house­hold vehi­cle access, a key fac­tor that can over­come access bar­ri­ers for peo­ple liv­ing far from gro­cery stores. How­ev­er, the analy­sis does not take into account oth­er pos­si­ble sources of food, such as farm­ers’ mar­kets or food pantries, and it does not assess the qual­i­ty or afford­abil­i­ty of avail­able food in these cen­sus tracts

Map­ping Food Deserts and Low-Income, Low-Access Areas in the Unit­ed States

Low-Income, Low-Access Food Areas in the United States

Source: USDA Food Access Research Atlas, Low Income and Low Access Lay­ers, 2019 

How Many Amer­i­cans Live in Neigh­bor­hoods Fac­ing Inad­e­quate Food Access?

About 39 mil­lion peo­ple — 13% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion — were liv­ing in low-income and low-access areas, more than 1 mile (urban) or 10 miles (rur­al) from the near­est super­mar­ket or large gro­cery store, accord­ing to the USDA’s most recent food access research report, pub­lished in 2022

With­in this group, researchers esti­mat­ed that almost 19 mil­lion peo­ple — or 6% of the nation’s total pop­u­la­tion — had lim­it­ed access to a supermarket.

What Caus­es a Food Desert?

There is no sin­gle cause, but there are sev­er­al con­tribut­ing factors.

The Food Dis­tri­b­u­tion System

Our country’s sys­tem has gen­er­al­ly result­ed in low-income com­mu­ni­ties hav­ing a high­er con­cen­tra­tion of small cor­ner stores, con­ve­nience mar­kets and fast food ven­dors, with few­er healthy food options. Low-income fam­i­lies are more like­ly to live in these neigh­bor­hoods, also called food swamps,” over­loaded with con­ve­nience foods.

Super­mar­ket Disinvestment

Some com­mu­ni­ties have expe­ri­enced inten­tion­al dis­in­vest­ment, with chain super­mar­kets locat­ing in wealth­i­er sub­urbs instead of low­er-income urban neigh­bor­hoods. While some attribute this to mar­ket self-reg­u­la­tion, rec­og­niz­ing that open­ing a store in a low-income area may have real or per­ceived invest­ment risks, research shows this pat­tern is not sole­ly due to com­mer­cial factors.

Trans­porta­tion Challenges

Low-income fam­i­lies are less like­ly to have reli­able trans­porta­tion (either a per­son­al vehi­cle or the abil­i­ty to pay for trans­porta­tion), which can pre­vent res­i­dents from trav­el­ing where need­ed to buy nutri­tious gro­ceries. A lack of pub­lic trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture also can be a bar­ri­er for low-income fam­i­lies to obtain food.

Income Inequal­i­ty

Healthy food costs more. When researchers from Brown Uni­ver­si­ty and Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty stud­ied diet pat­terns and costs, they found that the health­i­est diets — meals rich in veg­eta­bles, fruits, fish and nuts — were, on aver­age, $1.50 more expen­sive per day than diets rich in processed foods, meats and refined grains. For fam­i­lies liv­ing pay­check to pay­check, the high­er cost of healthy food could make it inac­ces­si­ble even when it’s read­i­ly available.

How Did the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic Impact Food Deserts and Access to Nutrition?

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic inject­ed even more chal­lenges — both logis­ti­cal and finan­cial — into the com­plex field of food access. At the same time, insights were gained that could help inform future strate­gies for improv­ing access to food.

As COVID-19 cas­es rose across the coun­try, restau­rants, cor­ner stores and food mar­kets — among oth­er busi­ness­es — closed their doors or reduced their oper­at­ing hours. Res­i­dents who relied on pub­lic trans­porta­tion for fetch­ing gro­ceries faced addi­tion­al hur­dles, includ­ing new trav­el restric­tions and scaled-back ser­vice sched­ules. Fur­ther, the pan­dem­ic led to sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, increased unem­ploy­ment, reduced fam­i­ly income and lost access to school meals for kids, fuel­ing an increase in food inse­cu­ri­ty rates in 2020.

Pan­dem­ic-relief mea­sures, such as the expand­ed Child Tax Cred­it, helped to reduce child pover­ty and food inse­cu­ri­ty rates in 2021. But this pos­i­tive trend reversed course when these mea­sures expired, and both pover­ty and food inse­cu­ri­ty rates spiked in 2022. Many experts point to the suc­cess of these pan­dem­ic-era poli­cies as evi­dence of what works to strength­en fam­i­ly finan­cial and food security.

Addi­tion­al­ly, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, online gro­cery (e‑grocery) shop­ping increased by more than 100%. Researchers also note that smart­phone own­er­ship is rapid­ly ris­ing among low-income pop­u­la­tions, indi­cat­ing that e‑grocery options may be a promis­ing direc­tion for expand­ing food access among groups with bar­ri­ers to tra­di­tion­al in-per­son stores. A vari­ety of dig­i­tal solu­tions are now being studied.

What Are the Solu­tions to Com­bat Food Deserts in America?

Fed­er­al, state and local pol­i­cy solu­tions are need­ed to address inad­e­quate and inequitable access to high-qual­i­ty food. Beyond poli­cies, oth­er forces — includ­ing eco­nom­ic, com­mer­cial, envi­ron­men­tal, cul­tur­al, com­mu­ni­ty and indi­vid­ual — shape food access and eat­ing pat­terns. With­in this com­plex land­scape, some strate­gies for alle­vi­at­ing poor food con­di­tions include:

  • part­ner­ing with res­i­dents to deter­mine com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven solu­tions, from data col­lec­tion and pol­i­cy devel­op­ment to pro­gram plan­ning and interventions;
  • extend­ing sup­port for small, cor­ner-type stores and neigh­bor­hood-based farm­ers mar­kets to increase the avail­abil­i­ty and afford­abil­i­ty of healthy foods in under-resourced areas;
  • strength­en­ing food pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion prac­tices and poli­cies, such as build­ing infra­struc­ture for urban agri­cul­ture, improv­ing food pro­cure­ment stan­dards and sup­port­ing local food-based busi­ness­es, e.g., coop­er­a­tive­ly-owned stores;
  • sup­port­ing food sov­er­eign­ty mod­els, in which res­i­dents over­see their own food pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion process­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Amer­i­can Indi­an and Alas­ka Native communities;
  • incen­tiviz­ing large gro­cery stores and super­mar­kets in under­served areas;
  • pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams to encour­age health­i­er eating;
  • ensur­ing that com­mu­ni­ty food pantries are effec­tive­ly implemented;
  • increas­ing access to and strength­en­ing fed­er­al food assis­tance pro­grams — such as the Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­gram (SNAP), WIC and school meals — which pro­vide crit­i­cal relief for chil­dren and fam­i­lies fac­ing hunger;
  • incen­tiviz­ing or requir­ing small gro­cery stores and farmer’s mar­kets to accept SNAP Elec­tron­ic Ben­e­fit Trans­fer pay­ments and WIC; and
  • con­tin­u­ing to explore inno­v­a­tive food access strate­gies through mobile apps, dig­i­tal solu­tions or oth­er possibilities.

While the spe­cif­ic solu­tions will look dif­fer­ent in every com­mu­ni­ty, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary part­ner­ships and long-term com­mit­ments will be need­ed to improve equi­table access to healthy food.

Casey Foun­da­tion Resources on food Inse­cu­ri­ty and Food Access

KIDS COUNT® Data Cen­ter Resources Relat­ed to Food Insecurity

Oth­er Resources on Food Access

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