An estimated 19 to 54 million Americans live in food deserts, depending on how distance to the nearest grocery store is measured. The people most affected are low-income households, communities of color, older adults, children in urban neighborhoods, rural residents, and anyone without reliable transportation. Food deserts don’t hit one type of community exclusively. They cut across geography and age, though certain groups face far steeper barriers than others.
How Many People Live in Food Deserts
The USDA tracks food access using census-level data, and the numbers shift significantly depending on how “low access” is defined. Using the broadest measure, where residents live more than half a mile from a supermarket in urban areas or more than 10 miles in rural areas, roughly 53.6 million people (17.4% of the U.S. population) live in low-income, low-access neighborhoods. Tighten the threshold to one mile in urban areas and 10 miles in rural ones, and the count drops to about 18.8 million, or 6.1% of the population.
That gap between 54 million and 19 million matters. A half-mile walk to a grocery store is manageable for a healthy adult with free time. For a parent juggling two jobs, an elderly person with mobility issues, or someone without a car, that same half mile becomes a serious obstacle, especially in bad weather or unsafe neighborhoods.
Urban Residents, Not Just Rural Ones
Most people picture food deserts as a rural problem: small towns where the nearest supermarket is a 30-minute drive. That’s real, but urban food deserts are just as widespread and in some ways more surprising. National data shows food insecurity rates are actually highest in urban cities (15.3%), followed by rural areas (14.7%), with suburban areas lowest at 10.5%.
In dense urban neighborhoods, the issue isn’t empty open land. It’s that grocery chains avoid low-income areas where profit margins are thin, leaving residents with corner stores, gas stations, and fast-food restaurants as their primary food sources. A study of children ages 6 to 11 found that those living in urban areas were significantly more likely to experience household food insecurity (29.15%) compared to rural children (19.10%). Researchers described this as an “urban paradox,” because cities have more total food options but far less equitable distribution of them.
Children and Families
Children are among the most vulnerable populations in food deserts because they have no control over where they live or what food is available to them. When families can only shop at nearby convenience stores, the options skew heavily toward processed, shelf-stable foods rather than fresh produce, lean protein, or whole grains. USDA research shows convenience store prices run higher than grocery store prices across the board: milk costs about 5% more, bread 10% more, and cereal 25% more. For a family on a tight budget, those markups compound quickly across a week’s worth of meals.
The result is that children in food deserts tend to eat more calorie-dense, nutrient-poor food. Over time, this dietary pattern increases the risk of childhood obesity, which is linked to type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular problems, and other chronic conditions that can follow a child into adulthood. The damage isn’t just physical. Kids who experience food insecurity also show higher rates of behavioral difficulties and lower academic performance.
Older Adults
Food insecurity among adults 60 and older has more than doubled in recent years, climbing from 5.5% to 12.4% over a ten-year period ending in 2016. Older adults face a unique combination of barriers. Fixed incomes make price differences between store types more painful. Chronic health conditions can make it physically difficult to travel to a store, carry groceries, or stand long enough to cook. And losing a driver’s license or a spouse who drove can abruptly cut off access to a supermarket that was previously reachable.
This is especially damaging because older adults often have diet-sensitive conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or kidney problems that require careful food choices. When the nearest option is a convenience store stocked with sodium-heavy canned goods and processed snacks, managing those conditions becomes far harder.
People Without Cars
Transportation is one of the clearest dividing lines between food access and food desert status. In many low-income census tracts, a significant share of households don’t own a vehicle. Without a car, a grocery store one mile away becomes a real logistical challenge: carrying bags on a bus, walking along roads without sidewalks, or paying for a rideshare that eats into an already stretched food budget.
Public transit doesn’t always solve the problem. Bus routes in low-income areas may not connect directly to grocery stores, may run infrequently, or may require transfers that turn a simple shopping trip into a multi-hour ordeal. This is why the USDA uses different distance thresholds for urban and rural areas. In a rural area without a car, being 10 or 20 miles from a supermarket can mean near-total reliance on whatever small local stores carry.
Communities of Color
Food deserts disproportionately overlap with predominantly Black, Latino, and Indigenous neighborhoods. This isn’t random. Decades of redlining, disinvestment, and discriminatory zoning pushed grocery chains out of these communities or prevented them from entering in the first place. The result is a pattern where race and zip code predict grocery access even after accounting for income.
In many of these neighborhoods, the food environment is better described as a “food swamp,” where fast-food restaurants and liquor stores outnumber grocery options by wide margins. Residents may technically have places to buy food, but almost none of those places sell the kind of food that supports long-term health. The combination of low access, high prices at nearby stores, and an abundance of cheap, heavily marketed processed food creates a nutritional environment that drives higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and diet-related cancers in these communities.
The Cost of Limited Options
Living in a food desert doesn’t just mean inconvenience. It means paying more for worse food. USDA data confirms that the convenience stores and small markets that fill the gap in food deserts charge meaningful premiums on staples. When cereal costs 25% more at the store you can actually walk to, and you’re feeding a family of four, the math forces hard choices: buy the cheaper, less nutritious option, skip meals, or spend time and money on transportation to a distant supermarket.
These daily trade-offs accumulate into measurable health disparities. Populations in food deserts show higher rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers. The gap isn’t explained by personal food preferences or lack of nutrition knowledge. It’s structural. When your neighborhood doesn’t have a grocery store, eating well requires resources (a car, free time, extra money) that the people most affected by food deserts are least likely to have.