A "food insecurity poverty line" to replace the official threshold in Canadian rural and urban settings? A single-person household perspective

Kent Ross; Tong Liu; Xiaolin Guo; Jesse Matheson; Daniel J Dutton

doi:10.1057/s41271-024-00485-2

A "food insecurity poverty line" to replace the official threshold in Canadian rural and urban settings? A single-person household perspective

J Public Health Policy. 2024 May 12. doi: 10.1057/s41271-024-00485-2. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Kent Ross¹, Tong Liu¹, Xiaolin Guo², Jesse Matheson³, Daniel J Dutton⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Community Health & Epidemiology, Dalhousie University, Centre for Clinical Research, 5790 University Avenue, Halifax, NS, B3H 1V7, Canada.
² Department of Economics, University of New Brunswick, 7 MacAuley Lane, Rm. 465, Singer Hall, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, Canada.
³ Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield, Rm. 416, Mappin Street, Sheffield, UK.
⁴ Department of Community Health & Epidemiology, Dalhousie University, Centre for Clinical Research, 5790 University Avenue, Halifax, NS, B3H 1V7, Canada. daniel.dutton@dal.ca.

PMID: 38736007
DOI: 10.1057/s41271-024-00485-2

Abstract

Household food insecurity is associated with both low income and high cost of living, it is a potentially better measure for consumption compared to income. We use data on food insecurity and income from 10 years of the Canadian Community Health Survey (2007-2017) of single-person households (n = 145,044) to estimate the probability of being food insecure at the Canadian poverty thresholds (Market Basket Measure thresholds, or MBMs), and determine the income required to reach that probability in each MBM region, aggregated by province and rural/urban status. A regression model shows the probability of being food insecure at the MBM is approximately 30% which we call the Food Insecurity Poverty Line (FIPL). The income required to meet the FIPL is substantially different from the MBM, sometimes 1.25 times the MBM. This implies that food insecurity is a potential sentinel measure for poverty.

Keywords: Food insecurity; Health policy; Population health; Poverty.