Team Food for Thought
Our team explored food accessibility in the United States in relation to government food assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). My specific research question was "How does accessibility to food relate to reliance on government food assistance programs such as SNAP?"
Visualizing with Tableau
We based our visualizations on the datasets: Food Environment Atlas Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food Access Research Atlas. With this data, we could compare important variables such as the percentage of children, seniors, and adults with low access to food and other economic factors for many counties across the US.
I wanted to design a map that highlighted the relationship between food accessibility and usage of SNAP benefits. With a map like this, it would be easy to see which counties were in the most need but were not taking advantage of food assistance.
On this map, each dot represents a county in the US. If a dot appears larger, that county has a larger percentage of people living at least 1 mile from a market in urban areas or more than 10 miles in rural areas. If a dot is redder color-wise, that means a higher percentage of people in that county receive SNAP benefits. This data is particularly interesting when looking at the large, yellow-colored dots as seen more heavily down the center of the country. These counties simultaneously have low accessibility to supermarkets as well as a low percentage of their population who use government assistance. To help alleviate these issues, the US government may want to adjust its food assistance program implementation to target these counties where it is most needed.
.png)