Samford Economist Studies Connection Between Walmart And Food Insecurity

By Morgan BlackSamford University

New research by Art Carden, associate professor in Samford University’s Brock School of Business, and a team of economists suggests that proximity to a Walmart Supercenter reduces food insecurity.

According to Carden, food insecurity — not having enough food because of lack of money or other resources — is higher today than before the Great Recession. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that more than 3 million households had children who were “food insecure.”

Carden and his co-researchers, Charles Courtemanche from Georgia State University, Xilin Zhou from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Murugi Ndirangu, director of Columbia University’s Nairobi Global Center, have found that Walmart is helping low-income families who struggle with this issue.Using data from the December Current Population Study Food Security Supplement between 2001 and 2012, they calculated the distance from each household’s census tract to the nearest Walmart Supercenter and found that “closer proximity to the nearest Walmart Supercenter leads to sizable and statistically significant improvements in all food security measures except the indicator for very low food security.”

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