Abstract
Objective
To estimate the number, distribution, and predictors of food pantries across counties
in the US in 2020.
Design
A cross-sectional, secondary data analysis of geocoded food pantry locations and social,
demographic, and economic characteristics at the county level.
Participants
Publicly disclosed food pantry locations were collected from websites in all counties.
Pantry locations were merged with data from the American Community Survey 2015–2019.
Main Outcome Measures
The number of food pantries per county.
Analysis
A negative binomial regression estimated the association between the number of pantries
per county and community characteristics.
Results
We found 48,581 food pantries from publicly disclosed websites, covering 98% of counties.
The mean and median number of pantries per county were 15.5 and 6, respectively. Selected
characteristics positively associated with the number of pantries per county were
income inequality, percentage of noncitizens, and percentage of single-parent households.
Selected characteristics negatively associated with the number of pantries per county
were percent with a high school education or less, percent of households in poverty,
and rurality.
Conclusions and Implications
The US has an extensive network of food pantries. Future work could assess the potential
causal pathways between pantry placement and county-level characteristics.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 26, 2023
Accepted:
December 13,
2022
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest Disclosure: The authors have not stated any conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
