A Spatial Statistical Approach to Identifying Areas with Poor Access to Grocery Foods in the City of Buffalo, New York

This paper proposes a spatial statistical approach to identifying the deprived areas where the access to grocery foods is restricted due to the destitute economic status of the target residents (the poor). For this purpose, the ratio of the expected population demand and observed food supply in each census block group is formulated as discrepancy index to denote the level of accessibility to grocery. Then, using the G-statistic, the regional spatial pattern of the indices is investigated to detect local hot-spots of disparity between population need and grocery provision at various spatial scales. The City of Buffalo is illustrated for this approach and planning implications for improving the accessibility are briefly discussed.