Beyond Income: Social Protection Spending and Food Insecurity in Europe

Bartolucci, Francesco and Crippa, Andrea and Pieroni, Luca (2026): Beyond Income: Social Protection Spending and Food Insecurity in Europe.

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of social protection spending on mitigating food insecurity across Europe between 2005 and 2023. Despite strong economic development, food insecurity remains a major challenge, reflecting persistent socio-economic vulnerabilities worsened by crises such as the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. Using longitudinal microdata from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we estimate a logit model with random individual effects and fixed country effects to analyze its determinants, while accounting for cross-country heterogeneity in welfare systems. The results show that higher social protection spending is associated with a 0.30 percentage-point reduction in food insecurity, with effects that are robust and stronger during economic downturns. This improvement is mainly mediated through income. These findings highlight social protection as a central instrument of food-security policy in high-income countries, where food insecurity is driven less by aggregate food availability than by unequal access, affordability constraints, and household exposure to income shocks. The results suggest that food policy should not be limited to food aid or supply-side interventions but should also include income-support mechanisms capable of protecting vulnerable households from trade-offs between food and other essential expenditures.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Food insecurity; social protection; food affordability; welfare regimes; EU-SILC; food policy
• Subjects: E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E6 - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook > E62 - Fiscal Policy; H - Public Economics > H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies > H53 - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I32 - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I38 - Government Policy ; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

References

Bambra, C., 2011. Health inequalities and welfare state regimes: theoretical insights on a public health ‘puzzle’. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 65, 740–745.

Bernaschi, D., Leonardi, L., 2023. Food insecurity and changes in social citizenship. A comparative study of Rome, Barcelona and Athens. European Societies 25, 413–443.

Caputo, V., Scarpa, R., Nayga Jr, R.M., Ortega, D.L., 2018. Are preferences for food quality attributes really normally distributed? An analysis using flexible mixing distributions. Journal of Choice Modelling 28, 10–27.

Carrillo ´ Alvarez, E., et al., 2023. Food and nutrition insecurity in Europe: challenges and opportunities for dietitians. Advances in Nutrition, vol. 14, p. 995-1004.

Dana, L.M., Ramos-Garc´ıa, C., Kerr, D.A., Fry, J.M., Temple, J., Pollard, C.M., 2025. Social vulnerability and child food insecurity in developed countries: a systematic review. Advances in Nutrition 16, 100365.

Eurostat, 2015. Methodological Guidelines and Description of EU-SILC Target Variables. Missy- Metadata for Official Statistic .

Eurostat, 2023. Methodological Guidelines and Description of EU-SILC Target Variables. Missy- Metadata for Official Statistics.

Frank, D.A., Neault, N.B., Skalicky, A., Cook, J.T., Wilson, J.D., Levenson, S., Meyers, A.F., Heeren, T., Cutts, D.B., Casey, P.H., et al., 2006. Heat or eat: the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and nutritional and health risks among children less than 3 years of age. Pediatrics 118, e1293–e1302.

Garratt, E., 2020. Food insecurity in Europe: Who is at risk, and how successful are social benefits in protecting against food insecurity? Journal of Social Policy 49, 785–809.

Grimaccia, E., Naccarato, A., 2022. Food insecurity in Europe: A gender perspective. Social Indicators Research 161, 649–667.

Heflin, C.M., 2006. Dynamics of material hardship in the women’s employment study. Social Service Review 80, 377–397.

Hillier-Brown, F., Thomson, K., Mcgowan, V., Cairns, J., Eikemo, T.A., Gil Gonz´ale, D., Bambra, C., 2019. The effects of social protection policies on health inequalities: evidence from systematic reviews. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 47, 655–665.

Hsiao, C., 2022. Analysis of panel data. 64, Cambridge University Press.

Huang, J., Kim, Y., Birkenmaier, J., 2016. Unemployment and household food hardship in the economic recession. Public Health Nutrition 19, 511–519.

Lanari, D., Crippa, A., Pieroni, L., 2026. Welfare spending and health perception: Evidence from Europe and Italy. Special issue of the Italian Society Conference in Economics Demography and Statistics.

Li, N., Dachner, N., Tarasuk, V., 2016. The impact of changes in social policies on household food insecurity in British Columbia, 2005–2012. Preventive Medicine 93, 151–158.

Loopstra, R., 2020. An overview of food insecurity in Europe and what works and what doesn’t work to tackle food insecurity. European Journal of Public Health, 30.

Loopstra, R., Reeves, A., McKee, M., Stuckler, D., 2016. Food insecurity and social protection in Europe: quasi-natural experiment of Europe’s great recessions 2004-2012. Preventive Medicine 89, 44–50.

Loopstra, R., Tarasuk, V., 2013. Severity of household food insecurity is sensitive to change in household income and employment status among low-income families. The Journal of Nutrition 143, 1316–1323.

Marchetti, S., Luca, S., 2022. The economic perspective of food poverty and (in)security: An analytical approach to measuring and estimation in Italy. Social Indicators Research 30, 995–1020.

Osberg, L., Sharpe, A., 2014. Measuring economic insecurity in rich and poor nations. Review of Income and Wealth 60, S53–S76.

Penne, T., Goedem´e, T., 2021. Can low-income households afford a healthy diet? Insufficient income as a driver of food insecurity in Europe. Food Policy 99.

P´erez-Corral, A.L., Moreno-M´ınguez, A., 2025. Social spending, child deprivation and family structure: a multilevel study in 31 European countries. International Review of Economics 72, 1–24.

Reeves, A., Loopstra, R., Stuckler, D., 2017. The growing disconnect between food prices and wages in Europe: cross national analysis of food deprivation and welfare regimes in twenty-one EU countries, 2004–2012. Public Health Nutrition 20, 1414–1422.

Skrondal, A., Rabe-Hesketh, S., 2004. Generalized latent variable modeling: Multilevel, longitudinal, and structural equation models. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Zorbas, C., Resnick, D., Jones, E., Suri, S., Iruhiriye, E., Headey, D., Martin, W., Vos, R., Menon, P., 2025. From promises to action: Analyzing global commitments to tackle hunger and food insecurity. Food Policy 136, 102968.