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

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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.

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Data availability

Data used in this project were provided by Statistics Canada and accessed through two of the RDCs (Research Data Centre) in the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN). Both the New Brunswick RDC and Prairie Regional RDC were used to access the data. Because of the confidential nature of these microdata, they cannot be shared. Researchers in Canada working at one of CRDCN’s member institutions can access the data at no additional cost to the researcher. Other researchers will have to pay costrecovery to access the data. Access to the data is subject to a background check and research approval process. The protocols for data access, including fees for researchers at non-CRDCN institutions, can be found on the CRDCN website.

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted at the Prairie Regional Research Data Centre and the University of New Brunswick Research Data Centre, parts of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN). This service is provided through the support of the University of Calgary and University of New Brunswick, the provinces of Alberta and New Brunswick, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and Statistics Canada. We thank J. C. Herbery Emery for feedback on drafts of this manuscript. All views expressed in this work are our own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Health & Epidemiology, Dalhousie University, Centre for Clinical Research, 5790 University Avenue, Halifax, NS, B3H 1V7, Canada

    Kent Ross, Tong Liu & Daniel J. Dutton

  2. Department of Economics, University of New Brunswick, 7 MacAuley Lane, Rm. 465, Singer Hall, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, Canada

    Xiaolin Guo

  3. Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield, Rm. 416, Mappin Street, Sheffield, UK

    Jesse Matheson

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  1. Kent Ross
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Correspondence to Daniel J. Dutton.

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Ross, K., Liu, T., Guo, X. et al. A “food insecurity poverty line” to replace the official threshold in Canadian rural and urban settings? A single-person household perspective. J Public Health Pol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41271-024-00485-2

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