Matthew Alyea
Are Food Banks located where the most vulnerable Populations need them to be? A Case Study of Toronto’s CMA using Multivariate Regression and Hot Spot Analysis © 2011
This research paper determines the spatial connections between food banks and the residents that they serve by using food bank usage as a proxy for food insecurity across the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area. This study also highlights the census variables that act as determinants to predicting food bank usage as well as illustrates the spatial mismatch of food banks within both urban and suburban contexts. The study found that the relationship between food bank usage and socio-demographic predictors was difficult to quantify given the low predictive power of the multivariate regression models. This implies that food banks in Toronto Census Metropolitan Area, though located often in low income neighbourhoods, still are not suitably situated, and was further substantiated through the use of Hotspot cluster mapping.