Dollar General Locations in Tennessee

This story map contains an analysis of the patterns that can be seen in the locations of Dollar General stores in Tennessee. I am predicting that I will find a correlation between the income of a county, level of educational attainment, and amount of Dollar General stores. The data will show that Dollar General stores tend to open in areas with overall lower income and lower educational attainment. I intend to use the resulting maps to show the trends in Dollar General locations and explain the implications this has on impacted areas of Tennessee.

This data used in these maps was sourced from both NHGIS and ArcGIS community analyst. The maps are a join of household income or educational attainment and the locations of Dollar Generals across Tennessee. The household income and educational attainment data came in the form of shape files from NHGIS, and the feature layer with the Dollar General location points from ArcGis community analyst in an excel file. The income data was taken from 2015-2019, and the educational attainment in 2010.

This project is based in Tennessee. The map containing data about income is on a county level, while the map containing educational attainment data is on a census tract level. The county level map will look like the map pictured above, while the census tract level will show the counties further divided to more clearly convey the data.

As mentioned above, the data used in this project was sourced from ArcGIS community analyst and NHGIS.

Firstly, I'm going to explain how I made the Dollar General locations into a feature layer. On ArcGIS community analyst, I did a business and facilities search for Dollar Generals in Tennessee. I downloaded this data as an excel file and exported it Windows, then to ArcGIS Pro. After this, I configured the pop-up to show only information that is relevant to my project content.

Secondly, I'm going to explain how I configured the data for the education map. I got the data in the form of a shape file from NHGIS. I then unzipped the file and added it as a folder connection to my map with the Dollar General locations layer. Then, I did a join between the data table and the boundary shapefile to get a shapefile with the demographic information. Since this displayed data for the entire continental US, I searched by attribute to select all of the Tennessee data and made a new layer. Next, I changed the symbology of the map by choosing the total number of people to show as counts and amounts by color. I then tweaked the style by choosing a color scheme that adheres to the principles of design as well as classifying the data using natural breaks. After this, I consulted the codebook to make the pop-ups human readable and eliminate unnecessary information.

Thirdly, I'm going to go through the process of making the income map. First, I made a new project and added the Dollar General feature layer. Like the education data above, I downloaded it as a shapefile from NHGIS, unzipped it, and added it to a new map with the Dollar General layer. I then did a join between the data table and the boundary shape file to get a shapefile with the demographic information. I then changed the style to show the income bracket representing $15,000 to $19,000 and chose counts and amounts by color. After that, classified the data using natural breaks and matched the color scheme of the previous map. Lastly, I changed the pop-ups to be relevant and readable using the codebook.

The map above represents educational attainment for males and females across Tennessee as well as the locations of all of the Dollar General stores. By clicking on one of the census tract regions, you can see the county, the total population, and the education of the population divided by males and females. By clicking on one of the points, you can see details about the location of the Dollar General. The map is formatted this way so you can see the educational attainment where there's a high volume of Dollar Generals versus the educational attainment where there's a low volume of Dollar Generals. The legend can be seen in the bottom left.

The map above displays the income for two-person households across Tennessee as well as the Dollar General locations. If you click on one of the counties, the pop-up will show the county name, the total population, and the yearly income brackets ranging from "less than $10,000" to "$200,000 or more". If you click on the points you can see information about the Dollar General. I set this map up to by filtered by the income bracket $15,000 to $19,000, so the counties that have more people making this amount of money are darker, and the counties with less are lighter. This is because the  poverty level  for a two person household in 2019, when this data stopped being collected, was around $16,000. I formatted it this way so you could see the number of Dollar Generals in areas with a high or low volume of people right at the poverty line. The legend can be seen in the bottom left.

My research question asks if there is a correlation between the locations of Dollar General stores and the income or educational attainment of an area. By looking at both of the maps above, it is evident that there is a trend in the placement of Dollar General stores in areas with low educational attainment and income. An example of this can be seen in the Memphis/Shelby County area.

"We went where they ain't," said David Perdue, a previous Dollar General chief executive in an  article  about Dollar General's strategy. Dollar General capitalizes on areas like food deserts that have little to no other options. These areas just happen to be those with low income and education. Since these areas have less education, there are less opportunities to make a lot of money in the workforce.

One reason why Dollar General likes customers who don't make a lot of money is that they keep coming back out of necessity. Rather than drive 15 miles out of town to the nearest Walmart, it makes sense to buy what you need at Dollar General, even if the options are not as good or nutritious. The products in Dollar General are deceiving, however, because they generally not cheaper than Walmart over time, as can be seen in this  study . This is because they package things in smaller quantities and charge the same amount - so while the items may seem cheaper in the moment, it is more expensive in the long run.

Diving deeper into the study, Walmart is especially cheaper when it comes to foods and beverages. This is important because Dollar General tends to populate in food deserts, which relates to the original research question since food deserts often are where income and education are both low. Since the food is more expensive over time, Dollar General is taking advantage of the fact that their customers are desperate and may not be able to afford the luxury of going to a grocery store.

Another reason this is detrimental to areas with low income and educational attainment is because areas flooded with Dollar Generals tend to not have any competition. This is either because they beat out the local grocer by having lower prices, or have so many locations that it is not appealing for competition to want to move there. Due to this, these people are left with options that are not as nutritious or fresh as what you could find at a grocery store. This leaves areas with low income and educational attainment to be both ripped off and malnourished.

So now that we know about the correlation between low income, educational attainment, and placement of Dollar Generals, what can we do to fix it?

Areas that struggle with these issues need incentives to provide healthy food to the population. A  bill  proposed to decrease the amount of food deserts in Tennessee does just that. Senate Bill 1619 would provide financial assistance for entities wanting to build, rehabilitate, or expand grocery stores in underserved areas.

Another solution is the implementation of more community farms.  Beardsley Community Farm  is an example of an urban demonstration farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, aiming to increase food security in the area. They donate 10,000 pounds of produce yearly to local organizations.

To sum up, there are a lot of opportunities in Tennessee to better serve our communities who have low income, low educational attainment, and are also overpopulated with Dollar Generals.

This  article  highlights a Dollar General located in rural Tennessee and explains why Dollar Generals thrive in low income areas.

This  article  is about Dollar General locations in rural Indiana and highlights a few different viewpoints about the impact of their presence.

This  article  goes into detail about why Dollar Generals are harmful to food deserts.

This  article  talks about the four food deserts in Nashville, and how they can be addressed.

This  article  talks about nutrition in Tennessee and has some helpful definitions.