Opening a new supermarket in a low-income neighborhood may improve residents' economic well-being and health, even if residents don't necessarily buy healthier food from the store, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Studying a low-income neighborhood in Pittsburgh where a new supermarket opened after decades of absence, researchers found that residents reported improvements across a number of economic and health benchmarks a year after the store opened, as compared to residents of a similar neighborhood that did not have a supermarket.

For example, 12 percent fewer people reported facing food insecurity as compared to the similar neighborhood a year after the store opened and about 10 percent fewer new cases of high cholesterol also were reported, according to the study published online by the Annals of Epidemiology.

“Our findings suggest that locating a new supermarket in a low-income neighborhood may trigger health and economic improvements beyond just having access to healthier and more-plentiful food offerings,” said Andrea Richardson, the study's lead author and an associate policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Policymakers should consider these broad impacts of neighborhood investment that can translate into improved health for residents in underserved neighborhoods.”

Read the source article about supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods by Andrea Richardson at rand.org