New evidence of child food insecurity in the UK
June 2017
Headline: 10% of children in the UK are reported by UNICEF to be living in households affected by severe food insecurity.
Being food secure means being sure of your ability to secure enough food of sufficient quality and quantity, to allow you to stay healthy and participate in society.
Food insecurity has varying degrees of severity. Early stages involve worry about whether there will be enough food, followed by compromising quality, variety and quantity of food. Going without food and experiencing hunger are most severe stages (see figure 1)
Figure 1
In 2013, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched the Voices of the Hungry (VoH) project to monitor food insecurity worldwide. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have subsequently used nationally-representative data from the first two years of this survey to develop the first global estimates of food insecurity among households with children under age 15.
Worldwide (152 countries and territories), 41% of children under age 15 live with a respondent who is moderately or severely food insecure, 19% live with a respondent who is severely food insecure.In the UK, 19% of children under age 15 live with a respondent who is moderately or severely food insecure, 10% live with a respondent who is severely food insecure. (exact figure 10.4% (confidence intervals 7.53% – 13.28%)
By either of these measures the UK is one of, if not the, worst performing nations in the European Union. (See Figures 2 and 3).
In a supplementary report, UNICEF combined this data concerning the UK’s performance on food insecurity with data on rates of childhood overweight & obesity (11–15 years). This produces a metric examining how well the country is end[ing] hunger, achieve[ing] food security and improv[ing] nutrition: one of the key global Sustainable Development Goals that UN member states – including the UK – have committed to achieving by 2030. According to this indicator, the UK is the 8thworst performing of 41 more economically developed nations.
The relationship between food insecurity and monetary poverty is complex, and the former appears to be more prevalent, requiring specific policy attention. UNICEF’s report indicates that share of UK children under the age of 15 living in a food insecure household is twice the UK’s under-18 poverty rate.
Globally, food insecurity rates are on average higher among households with children under the age of 15 compared to households without children.
Data from the first year of the VoH project indicate that 10.1% of people aged 15 or over in the UK are moderately or severely food insecure, with 4.5% being severely food insecure
A separate survey, conducted for the Food Standards Agency using a more detailed survey tool, recently found that 8% of all adults in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland are food insecure; and a further 13% of adults only marginally food secure
