Race-Neutral Decisions, Racially Unequal Results: A Examining Retail Redlining in the Supermarket Industry in Chicago, 1970-2000.

• In Event: 127 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Paper Session: Table 19. Community

Abstract

Research on “food deserts” has documented that minority neighborhoods
regularly experience poorer access to full-service supermarkets compared to white
neighborhoods. These studies – and the public outcry accompanying them – suggest that
supermarkets make racially discriminatory location decisions that especially disadvantage
the health, and economic well-being of African American communities. My paper uses a
unique historical census of 714 supermarkets in the City of Chicago across four decades
to test for evidence of retail red-lining. I use spatially-weighted regression, descriptive
statistics, and GIS techniques to examine the effects of neighborhood racial and poverty
composition on supermarket access, and how these effects have changed over the 4-
decade period. I find evidence of retail red-lining in 1970 when spatial spillovers between
contiguous neighborhoods are taken into account. However, after 1970, supermarkets
exhibit a practically small, but statistically significant preference for Black
neighborhoods. I conclude that in Chicago, observed racial inequalities in supermarket
access are not driven by discriminatory retail location decisions. Rather, they are driven
by the interaction between changing business models in the supermarket sector and
durable patterns of race and class-based residential segregation. Against this backdrop,
firms’ race-neutral, or slightly minority-preferential location decisions nevertheless
produce racially unequal results that are highly disadvantageous to minority
communities. I discuss the implications of my findings for research and policy.

Author

• Anjanette Marie Chan Tack, University of Chicago