The importance of the presence of supermarkets extends even beyond the health outcomes of residents. I use minority competition theory to show how the percentage of African Americans in a city (in a U-shaped pattern) moderates the relationship between the percentage of African Americans and the number of supermarkets in cities' zip codes. The presence of supermarkets in a neighborhood represents one of the mechanisms through which demographic developments in the neighborhood influence local residents.
More specifically, they argue that the relationship between demographics and the number of organizations in a neighborhood is moderated5 by the characteristics of the city in which the neighborhood resides. The material and symbolic resources of neighborhoods (e.g. the presence of supermarkets) are not necessarily a derivative of the direct "functioning" of the neighborhood. I follow Massey and Denton (1993) in taking percent African American as an independent predictor of organizational presence.
This dissertation simply points out that the minority competition process can be useful in understanding city-level moderating causes of the relationship between the percentage of African Americans and the presence of supermarkets in a neighborhood. This dissertation incorporates urban sociological theory into the study of food deserts to better understand the causes of the presence (or lack thereof) of supermarkets in neighborhoods. This dissertation argues that the 'neighborhood effect' explanations of the lack of material and symbolic resources in low-income and high-percentage African-American neighborhoods – specifically differences in the presence of supermarkets – are insufficient.
The percentage of the population in the zip code that is African American is also considered.
By year analysis of the relationships between supermarkets and demographics Table 3 summarizes the nine models used to examine the relationship between the
To account for changes in categories of poverty and household income over time, the average of the quartiles of the three years examined is calculated and used as categories for all models examined.22 Static categories of % African American over time are also used: low African American population (under 30%), mixed race population (30-70% African American) and high African American population (over 70% African American). Variables are coded with three categories where the middle categories of a postal code in the preceding time point are coded as 0 (the reference category), the low categories are coded as 1 and the high categories are coded as 2.23 These dummy variables test whether the relationship between ' a specific demographic category and the amount of supermarkets changes over time, controlling for changes in demographics. In fact, recorded population is the only variable that is consistently significant in all models.
Although the percentage of African Americans in a zip code is a consistently negative predictor over time, this variable is significant only in 1970 when controlling for the poverty rate and in 1990 when controlling for household income. As shown in Table 3, the economic predictors of the number of supermarkets in a zip code changed direction over time. The changing relationship between poverty and supermarkets is also evident from the models with zip codes with poverty above 30%: A non-significant and positive relationship in 1970 becomes a non-significant and negative relationship in 1980 and then a significant and negative relationship in 1990. .
The relationship between median household income in a zip code and the number of supermarkets in a zip code was negative (although not significant) in 1970. The relationship between median household income and the number of supermarkets in a zip code remained positive (although still not significant) in 1990.
The relationships between changes in supermarkets and changes in demographics Part 2a
In 1970, the relationship between the number of supermarkets and the percentage of the population living in poverty was positive. This chapter shows that the institutional logic of the food industry moderates the relationship between neighborhood economic characteristics and the presence of supermarkets. The increase in the number of supermarket chains in the 1920s and 1930s led to a new institutional logic of the food industry that would last until the early 1970s: a logic of economies of scale.
I further investigate the effect of the changing institutional logic of the food industry on the location of stores in economically disadvantaged areas from 1970 to 1990. The percentage of people in poverty and the categorical variable of zip codes with more than 30% poverty are not statistically significant predictors of the number of stores in a zip code for any business philosophy. Average household income (in 1980 dollars) is a positive and statistically significant predictor of the number of stores in a zip code for both corporate philosophies (although this significance is at the 0.1 level for the economies of scale logic).
A historical analysis of the grocery industry shows a change in the institutional logic of the grocery industry in the mid-1970s. Using firm-specific grocery location data for the industry's transition years (1970 to 1983), this chapter further analyzed whether changes in the institutional logic of the grocery industry altered the presence of supermarkets in economically disadvantaged zip codes. The findings of this chapter indicate that policies that address the institutional logic of the grocery industry can help produce more supermarkets in economically disadvantaged areas.
Research on competition between minorities has generally focused on the effect of the percentage of minorities on punitive practices (also called punitive power by Blalock). Specifically, it is assumed that the effect of the percentage of African Americans on the number. The between-city (level 2) variation in the percent African American slope is significant (p < 0.001) and explains 0.002% of the total variation in the number of supermarkets per zip code.
Although the effect of cities on the percent African American slope explains a small portion of the total variation in the number of grocery stores in a zip code, it is both statistically and theoretically significant—and explains how cities can influence the relationship between the percent African American and the number of supermarkets in a zip code. Looking at the predictors of the intercept, the unemployment rate, poverty rate, and region of a city significantly predict the number of supermarkets per zip code in a city. This chapter extends Small and McDermott's (2006) “conditional perspective” of neighborhood effects by examining whether competition by minority groups in cities (Blalock, 1967) moderates the negative effect of the percentage of African Americans on the number of supermarkets in a zip code.
This chapter first extends the conditional perspective of neighborhood effects, developed by Small and McDermott (2006), to the effect of the percentage of African Americans on the number of supermarkets. The results of this thesis indicate that policies that address the institutional logic of the food industry can contribute to the production of more supermarkets in economically disadvantaged areas.
Variable
Effects of ZIP Code and City-Level Variables on Number of Supermarkets, Random Cross Section, and % African American Lean.
The Level 1 %Black Slope Depends on City %Black
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