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Information is the most valuable commodity in the world, but everyone does not have equal access to information. Lack of equal digital access is an information access desert. Libraries should be public spaces to meet the digital needs of the community. Due to socio-political neglect, urban and rural public libraries cannot always meet patron needs. There is a pattern where urban libraries are either closed or cannot meet the demands for digital access until gentrification when upper class people move in and demand new libraries with sufficient digital access. Rural libraries suffer a similar fate with insufficient digital access to meet the economic and educational needs of their communities. Information access deserts identify a crucial issue for equal access to all regardless of economic status.

Previous research has extensively examined “food deserts,” where access to healthy food is limited. However, little is known of the buying behavior at the individual household level in terms of buying habits and consumption in these areas. The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent other factors than access can account for the purchase of healthy food products, namely, fruits and vegetables.

This paper proposes to partially fill this gap through a qualitative (n=55) and quantitative (n=512) study of those people who are in charge of their household purchases in two food deserts in the city of Montreal.

Results show that geographical access to supermarkets is not the main factor fostering the purchase of healthy foods (fruits and vegetables). Indeed, food education (e.g. information, simple recipes, cooking classes), associated with a changing mediation process through product diversification (e.g. availability of local products in bulk) and supply (e.g. farmers) seems to be more significant.

Future studies could compare the results obtained through this study in different socio-demographic contexts. Longitudinal analyses could also increase the understanding of the social and commercial challenges.

In contrast to previous studies, the results show that geographical access to supermarkets is not the main factor fostering the purchase of fruits and vegetables. Indeed, food education (e.g. information, simple recipes, cooking classes), associated with a changing mediation process through product diversification (e.g. products in bulk) and supply (e.g. farmers) seem to be more significant.

Food deserts are an attractive metaphor, but because defining this phrase and actually identifying food deserts as geographic places are a contentious endeavour, it is more revealing to discuss related terms. Inherent in the debate around food deserts (i.e. how they are defined, if and where they exist) is the topic of access. The central purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that access is a more accurate and less misleading concept than food deserts when it comes to highlighting food inequalities.

Social exclusion, choice, food security, and public health are fields on which the paper draws. The proposition is that food security studies have entered a postmodern food security paradigm, which can readily be seen in US‐based community food security efforts.

Progressing beyond the initial attention‐grabbing nature of the food desert term, a conceptually thin foundation is discovered that impedes universal understanding and acknowledgment that areas of inadequate food access do exist. Food access, on the other hand, is an established phrase that has evolved and been applied in different arenas to address food security. Food access is a readily understood concept that can be tailored to specific applications; whether it is physical, economic, or informational food access.

It is proposed here that access is a more accurate and less misleading concept than food deserts when it comes to highlighting food inadequacies.

The purpose of this paper is to identify bank deserts in the USA in 2009 and 2015, separately for inner city, suburban, and rural areas. It also identifies correlations between bank deserts, population characteristics, market competition, and payday lending restrictions, both cross-sectionally and over time.

FDIC data on bank office locations are used to identify bank deserts, defined as the 5 percent of census tracts with the greatest distance from the centroid to the nearest office. Those data are matched to both American Community Survey data to identify population characteristics, to a list of states with payday lending prohibitions, and to levels of market competition. An alternative measure of bank deserts corrects for population density. Geography is analyzed, mean characteristics compared, and random effects regressions capture static and dynamic correlates.

Population density explains approximately half of bank distance variance. Bank deserts appear more often in southern and western states, and expanded significantly in inner cities while contracting in rural areas. Regression results suggest that African Americans were overall and increasingly likely to live in bank deserts and Native Americans were overall more likely to live in rural bank deserts. Rural poverty is linked to bank deserts, and the effects of competition are complex.

The space for policy intervention exists in African American inner cities and Native American rural communities.

The relative measure of bank deserts is novel, as are dynamic estimates and random effects analysis of correlates.

The last ten years have seen a gradual withdrawal of retail facilities from many local areas and the consequent growth of “shopping deserts” resulting in social and health disbenefits. The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential for e‐shopping to fill the vacuum and to assist disadvantaged shoppers.

The paper uses prior published research to comment on the extent to which e‐retailing may be the shopping solution of the future?

The internet has limited potential to compensate for shopping deserts, as consumers who do not have a good range of physical shops within walking distance also tend to lack access to the internet.

The paper is based solely on prior research. The authors recommend action research that may hopefully help excluded shoppers to become more included by addressing the problems of access to e‐shopping.

Government, service providers and e‐retailers may consider interventions such as subsidised internet access, training and the provision of e‐cash.

The paper links research from diverse fields relating to shopping deserts, the digital divide, health, wellbeing, social and experiential aspects of (e‐)shopping.

This study introduces the concept of financial advice deserts (FADs), including financial advice received from personal financial advisors (PFAs) and Certified Financial Planners™ (CFP professionals) and investigates the association between living in these FAD states and the retirement planning activities of individuals.

This study uses merged data gathered from multiple sources including (1) available state-level information on CFP professionals from the CFP board website, (2) state-level information on PFAs from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and (3) individual levels of retirement planning behavior and other personal characteristics from the 2018 FINRA National Financial Capability Study. Using web data extraction tools and logistic regression analyses, this study examines the association between a series of individual retirement planning activities and living in the FAD states.

The study found that living in the FAD states was negatively associated with both having retirement accounts and contributing regularly to retirement accounts. Overall, the findings of this study underscore the need for providing greater access to financial advice and improving financial literacy among financially marginalized populations who are residing in FAD states in the United States of America.

This study makes unique contributions to the literature by raising the issue of geographic inequality in terms of access to financial advice and introducing the innovative notion of FADs. The findings provide fresh insights into the understanding of retirement planning and preparedness from the perspective of state-level inequality of financial advice through PFAs and CFP professionals, thereby expanding the previous knowledge that emphasizes only individual- and household-level differences. Significant implications for public policies and practitioners are also discussed.

This paper aims to examine the realities of food deserts and the vulnerable populations in urban areas in the USA; review underlying causes of these realities; and propose a set of solutions to address challenges facing vulnerable populations living in urban food deserts.

The paper presents a case study with a focus on a specific vulnerable population living in a food desert in the inner city of Richmond, Virginia.

While vulnerable populations and food deserts have much in common, in general, they both reflect, for specific groups of people, a failure to achieve or even having a chance to achieve the American dream. In particular, they reflect the economic, social, culture and education disenfranchisement of many citizens in society.

This exploratory paper and case study offers a beginning reference point to both understand and deal with urban food deserts and the vulnerable populations that reside there-in. Food deserts are a serious problem that is historically based and contemporarily reinforced by economic, social and cultural/community realities in society. By first understanding these realities, the paper calls for research and action.

“Food deserts” in British cities are partly the result of the expansion of multiple food retailing. New large stores force smaller stores to close down, thus depriving local residents of food shopping opportunities. Examines this proposition through an analysis of changes in consumer access to food shopping in Cardiff over the last 20 years. Shows that although accessibility scores have increased in Cardiff since 1980 they have increased at a faster rate in higher income areas. In a pocket of deprived areas accessibility has declined over the decade. Thus, there has been a polarisation effect with a widening gap in accessibility scores across the city.