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Mobility Strategies and Food Shopping for Low-Income Families

A Case Study

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Urban Studies and Planning Program at the University of Maryland College Park

This article focuses on the relationship between the mobility constraints that low-income families face in their acquisition of food and the coping strategies they develop for this routine task. The motivations and rationale behind travel and provisioning choices of the working poor and the resources available to them are examined by means of a series of semistructured interviews conducted with members of twenty-six low-income house-holds residing in the Austin, Texas, area. The ways that these households cope with their mobility and economic disadvantage are complex, logical, and varied; depend on their resources and circumstances; and must be flexible to deal with day-to-day occurrences. Evidence from this study shows that the flexibility afforded by the automobile widens the spatial and temporal aspects of mobility, allowing for a more extensive search for goods and services. The automobile is an important mode for nonwork travel, even among those households that do not own one. However, the transit and walking remain critical in providing the mobility needed to access food-shopping destinations for these families.

Key Words: food security • poverty • provisioning • transportation • nonwork travel

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