Policy Watch Robert N. Mayer and Debra L. Scammon Editors University of Utah ment, Syracuse University. The team also conducted a sur- vey of Oakland, California consumers to determine how far they traveled to do their weekly grocery shopping. The study results illustrate the current problems with inner-city supermarkets and point to some possible solutions. There were large differentials across the seven study sites in the cost of the same market basket of food items for a fam- ily of four: The results of the market-basket price survey suggest that the presence of a large national chain store in a low- income neighborhood can make a big difference in keeping prices low. When these stores are absent, prices tend to be dramatically higher. For example, the store with the highest prices, the Acorn Super (an independent grocery store), is the only supermarket in the low-income neighborhood of West Oakland. Acorn Super prices were 41 % higher than the lowest priced market, Lucky, in Elmhurst. And Acorn's prices were 11 % higher than the next most expensive mar- ket, ABC, in Elmhurst. According to some local residents, the Acorn Super draws the scorn of consumers not only for its high prices but for its old produce, lack of selection, and rotten meat. Some consumers even allege that the prices at the Acorn Super increase on the first and fifteenth of the month, when food stamps, welfare, social security, and other government support checks are received. In our consumer survey, some West Oakland residents mentioned that they would like a Lucky Store in their neighborhood so they would have eas- ier access to the lower prices offered by this supermarket chain (a notion supported by our price survey) as well as bet- ter quality food. As a result of the current situation, many low-income consumers travel outside the neighborhood to do their gro- cery shopping. Even if the neighborhoods surrounding low- income areas are not economically integrated, their shop- ping aisles are. In fact, our consumer survey found that these consumers typically travel at least 11 minutes to get to a "decent" grocery store by car (for many, this is by car- pool), whereas middle-income consumers typically drive less than five minutes or walk to conveniently located neigh- borhood supermarkets. In Urban Areas: Many of the Poor Still Pay More for Food Judith Bell, Co-Director, and Bonnie Marfa Budin, Research Associate, West Coast Regional Office of Consumers Union I n 1992, the West Coast Regional Office of Consumers Union conducted a comprehensive study of economic discrimination: "The Thin Red Line: How the Poor Still Pay More" [Troutt 1992]. The study compared and de- scribed where low-income consumers go to purchase basic necessities, how they get there, and what they pay relative to middle-income households in the same city. We looked primarily at five basic goods and services: food, housing, health care, banking, and credit. Redlining, broadly conceived, is economic discrimina- tion against certain consumers on the basis of factors such as race, area of residence, gender, and type of employment. Redlining has been documented for many years in the lend- ing practices of financial institutions. The findings of our re- port show that the red line of economic discrimination ex- tends throughout the low-income consumer infrastructure, with dramatic effects on low-income consumers and their neighborhoods. The study compared four neighborhoods, three low- and one middle-income, in Oakland: West Oakland, Fruitvale, Elmhurst, and Rockridge. The study also compared two neighborhoods, one low- and one middle-income, in Los An- geles: Broadway/Manchester (South Central) and Mar Vista (West Side). We used a middle-income neighborhood for our comparisons because they are an American benchmark of access to goods and services. We discuss the data and conclusions of the report's chap- ter on food, focusing on the availability of supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods and the prices for staples at these stores in Oakland exclusively. We also review some re- cent studies and articles that chronicle encouraging changes in the development of supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods in other parts of the country. Results A team of students in the Haas School of Business of the University of California at Berkeley (supervised by Kerry P. Curtis, Lecturer at the Haas School, and the report's au- thor, David Dante Troutt) collected the study's data. They compared food prices among low-income and middle- income neighborhood supermarkets in Oakland. They used a market-basket model developed by Professor Elizabeth G. Crockett [1992], Department of Nutrition and Food Manage- Store ABC Lucky Lucky Foodvale Safeway Lucky Acorn Super Area Elmhurst Elmhurst Fruitvale Fruitvale Rockridge Rockridge West Oakland Market Basket $305.76 $239.77 $278.10 $273.95 $295.48 $264.35 $338.69 268 Journal of Public Policy & Marketing Vol. 12 (2) Fall 1993, 268-275