Department of Economics, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina.
Department of Economics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Am J Prev Med. 2020 Aug;59(2):e31-e38. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2020.02.009. Epub 2020 May 14.
Differences in diet quality across socioeconomic groups are a key contributor to health gradient. An agent-based model was developed to explore how income segregation affects food access for poor households under idealized circumstances where the poor have the same knowledge of and preferences for healthy food as the nonpoor.
The agent-based model featured households with heterogeneous incomes and automobile ownership characteristics on the basis of 2016 U.S. Census Bureau data. Households had identical preferences and were perfectly informed about the prices and availability of food products in different grocery stores. The model featured 2 fully informed competing grocery stores that chose their locations, product lines, and prices to maximize profits. The model was simulated for different levels of income segregation. The model in this article was created and analyzed in 2019.
With no segregation, the rich and the poor households had comparatively equal access to grocery stores (in terms of travel distance) and healthy food (in terms of availability). With high segregation, poor households were forced to travel farther for groceries and may find healthy food unavailable at the grocery stores closest to their homes. Incentivizing grocery stores to locate equitably would require offering them substantial subsidies.
The model demonstrates that even under idealized conditions of perfect information and fully rational consumers, income segregation leads to adverse consequences for healthy food access by the poor. Agent-based modeling is useful to explore important hypothetical scenarios and should be considered as one of many worthwhile complementary frameworks to study complex topics.
不同社会经济群体的饮食质量差异是导致健康梯度的一个关键因素。本研究构建了一个基于主体的模型，以探索在理想化的情况下，即贫困人口对健康食品的了解和偏好与非贫困人口相同的情况下，收入隔离如何影响贫困家庭的食物获取。
基于 2016 年美国人口普查局的数据，该基于主体的模型以具有异质收入和汽车拥有特征的家庭为特色。家庭对不同杂货店的食品价格和供应情况具有相同的偏好和完全了解。该模型具有 2 家完全知情的竞争杂货店，它们根据地理位置、产品线和价格选择来最大化利润。该模型模拟了不同程度的收入隔离情况。本文中的模型是在 2019 年创建和分析的。
在没有隔离的情况下，富人和贫困人口在杂货店（就旅行距离而言）和健康食品（就供应而言）方面享有相对平等的获取机会。在高度隔离的情况下，贫困人口被迫长途跋涉去杂货店，可能会发现离家最近的杂货店没有健康食品。激励杂货店公平定位需要提供大量补贴。
该模型表明，即使在完全信息和完全理性消费者的理想化条件下，收入隔离也会对贫困人口获得健康食品产生不利影响。基于主体的建模对于探索重要的假设情况很有用，应被视为研究复杂问题的许多有价值的补充框架之一。
