Abstract
Surveys from societies like the USA, Canada, the UK, and France suggest that 5–15% of the population have experienced “food insecurity” in the sense of not having enough food to eat due to a lack of money or other resources. The Nordic countries are among the most affluent societies in the world and it is generally assumed that food insecurity has been eradicated due to relatively low differences in wages and well-developed social security schemes. This representative web survey of food and eating in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden indicates however that food insecurity does exist in the Nordic region. In line with research from other industrialized counters, it also suggests that women, young people, single parents, and low-income group seem more at risk of experiencing food insecurity than others. These results must be regarded as preliminary, needing to be substantiated by more comprehensive studies. Moreover, there is a need to develop or use more standardized methodologies enabling comparison across countries and mapping trends over time.
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Notes
The five questions are (1) “Have you had fears of running out of food before you have money to buy more?,” (2) “Have you run out of money to buy food?,” (3) “Have you had too little food due to economic problems?,” (4) “Have you bought cheaper food than you normally buy?,” and (5) “Have you been out of food for at least one day due to economic problems?”
We also asked a second question: “We/I have been forced to buy cheaper food to pay for other things,” with the response categories “often true,” “sometimes true,” “never true,” and “don’t know.” The question’s response corresponded with HHI’s response, but since the question’s estimates have not been tested in previous research, it was excluded from the analysis.
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Borch, A., Kjærnes, U. The Prevalence and Risk of Food Insecurity in the Nordic Region: Preliminary Results. J Consum Policy 39, 261–274 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10603-016-9316-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10603-016-9316-x