【シンポジウム報告】／食料品アクセス問題の現状と今後

─「平成27年国勢調査」に基づく新たな食料品アクセスマップの推計から─

抄録

In this paper, I clarify the current situation regarding food accessibility problems in Japan, based on a new food accessibility map that I created. In addition, I discuss the changes and factors that affected them compared to 10 years ago. I use the new food accessibility map to review the estimation method and define “food access difficulties” as elderly over 65 years who live 500m or more away from stores, and who cannot use private cars. I used the 500m grid square statistics of the “2015 Population Census” by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the “2014 Census of Commerce” by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. Estimation results reveal that there are 8,246,000 food access difficulties across Japan, among them 3,776,000 in urban areas and 4,470,000 in rural ones. In particular, 5,355,000 people are over 75 years old, denoting almost 65% of all food access difficulties. These difficulties have been increasing constantly especially in urban areas from 2005 to 2015 but have been decreasing in rural areas.