Neighborhood Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in the Food and Alcohol Environment: Are There Differences by Commercial Data Sources?

Objectives This study examined neighborhood racial and socioeconomic disparities and the density of food and alcohol establishments. We also examined whether these disparities differed by data source. Methods This study included commercial data for 2003 and 2009 from InfoUSA and Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) in 416 census tracts in Allegheny County, PA. Food and alcohol establishment densities were calculated by using area and population data from the 2000 US census. Differences between InfoUSA and D&B of food and alcohol densities across neighborhood racial and socioeconomic characteristics were tested using correlations and two-way mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results There were differences by data source in the association between neighborhood racial and socioeconomic characteristics and food/alcohol establishment density. There was a positive correlation between grocery store/supermarket density and percentage black, poverty, and percentage without a car among D&B data but not in InfoUSA. Alcohol outlet density (AOD) increased as neighborhood poverty increased for both data sources, but the mean difference in AOD between InfoUSA and D&B was highest among neighborhoods with 25–50 % poverty (Cohen’s d −0.49, p