Research by scholars in New Jersey and North Carolina reports that one additional Wal-Mart Supercenter per 100,000 residents increases individual's probability of being obese by 2.3 percentage points.
Harvard Business Review blogs chose to highlight the report from the Journal of Urban Economics. Interesting that a capitalist tool like HBR would document the report.
The study implies that proliferation of food at highly discounted prices, explains 10.5% of the U.S. rise in obesity since the late 1980s.
In looking at the research data I noticed a couple other intriguing conclusions. The research found that the progress in retail logistics translated to substantial reductions in the prices of food and other consumer goods. (I assume my readers are aware that Wal-Mart is the logistics god of the universe, and that the firm first developed logistics as a fundamental competitive advantage.) The authors used data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) which tracked rates of obesity in various states. They matched the data with Walmart Supercenter entry dates and locations, and examined the effect of Supercenters on body mass index (BMI).
Another of the more intriguing conclusions is that the resulting increase in medical expenditures offsets only a small portion of consumers' savings from shopping at Supercenters.