University of Alabama.
Econ Geogr. 2010;86(4):431-52. doi: 10.1111/j.1944-8287.2010.01090.x.
Recent empirical work in the obesity literature has highlighted the role of the built environment and its potential influence in the increasing prevalence of obesity in adults and children. One feature of the built environment that has gained increasing attention is the role of access to chain grocers and their impact on body mass index (BMI). The assessment of the impacts of spatial access to chain grocers on BMI is complicated by two empirical regularities in the data. There is evidence that health outcomes such as BMI are clustered in space and that there is spatial dependence across individuals. In this article, we use an econometric model that takes into account the spatial dependence, and we allow the effect of access to differ for a person depending on whether he or she lives in a low-income community or peer group. We categorize this community using the characteristics of the people who immediately surround the individual rather than using census tracts. Using georeferenced survey data on adults in Marion County, Indiana, we find that the effect of improvements in chain grocer access on BMI varies depending on community characteristics.
近期肥胖症文献中的实证研究强调了建筑环境的作用及其对成年人和儿童肥胖症患病率上升的潜在影响。建筑环境中日益受到关注的一个特征是接近连锁杂货店的程度，以及其对体重指数（BMI）的影响。由于数据中存在两个经验规律，因此评估连锁杂货店的空间可达性对 BMI 的影响变得复杂。有证据表明，BMI 等健康结果在空间上是聚集的，并且个体之间存在空间依赖性。在本文中，我们使用了一种计量经济学模型，该模型考虑了空间依赖性，并允许访问权限的影响因个人是居住在低收入社区还是同侪群体而有所不同。我们使用紧邻个人的人的特征来对社区进行分类，而不是使用人口普查地段。我们使用印第安纳州马里恩县成年人的地理参考调查数据发现，连锁杂货店访问条件改善对 BMI 的影响因社区特征而异。
