Capping the Poor’s Ability to Prosper (Part 9 in a 10-Part Series)
Nicolas Loris /
The difference between the price of a gallon of milk at a local grocery store and a corner market or convenient store may be modest, but add it up over the course of a few years, as well as paying higher prices for the rest of your groceries, and the difference is quite sizeable. That’s the theme of DeNeen Brown’s article in today’s Washington Post, asserting that the poor do not have supermarkets to walk to and thus pay a premium for most goods they buy:
Prices in urban corner stores are almost always higher, economists say. And sometimes, prices in supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods are higher. Many of these stores charge more because the cost of doing business in some neighborhoods is higher. ‘First, they are probably paying more on goods because they don’t get the low wholesale price that bigger stores get,’ says Bradley R. Schiller, a professor emeritus at American University”