The Implicit Price of Food Access in an Urban Area: Evidence from Milwaukee Property Markets

An ongoing debate in the food security literature focuses on a definition of food security that is operational and generalizable. In this paper, we suggest that food security is related to the implicit prices paid by households in urban residential markets for food access. Using the hedonic property value model, we examine the distribution of implicit prices across socioeconomic characteristics for access to local food sources. Using land use and residential transaction data from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we find evidence of higher implicit access prices in neighborhoods with a larger proportion of African American and Latino American households.