Food Access and Social Capital

As mentioned in Chapter 1, we hypothesized that food access (i.e. the distance between homes and the nearest grocery stores) and local social capital (SC; i.e. ties with family and neighbors) are the most important factors in the occurrence of food desert (FD) issues in Japan. SC plays an especially important role in urban FDs. Food access and local SC (discussed below) are geographical (i.e. living environment) factors, and FD is a geographical issue. To identify FD locations, we must measure factors statistically. In this chapter, we introduce how to measure food access (Sect. 3.1) and local SC (Sect. 3.2).