Estimation of Population Classified by Distance to the Nearest Fresh Food Store

—Using Grid-Square Statistics of Population Census and Census of Commerce—

Abstract

Population aging and a decrease in the number of food stores affect the daily food purchase of elderly people. One of the factors burdening the elderly is the distance to stores. In this study, we estimated the population for whom distance to the nearest fresh food store is over 500m in Japan. Owing to the unavailability of a reliable list of the relevant stores in Japan, we employed the grid-square statistics of Population Census and Census of Commerce. We used the probabilities of the relevant stores being more than 500m away from residences, assuming that a store and a person are uniformly distributed in the grid and that stores are located independently of one another. We estimated that, in Japan, 9.7 million people aged 65 years and above live over 500m from the nearest fresh food store. This estimation, however, disregarded the effect of commercial accumulation, the influence of which was estimated at an increase in the national estimate by nearly 9% at most.