Panel:
The Impacts of Public Policy on Household Food Insecurity
(Family, Child, and Aging)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Household food insecurity, that is, insecure and insufficient access to food due to resource constraints, is a critical determinant of health. The Sustainable Development Goals explicitly include the aim to achieve food security by 2030 in recognition that doing so is necessary to meet other goals for health and well-being, education, and productivity. This panel explores the impacts of different policy domains on household food insecurity, namely, trade, family, and social security policies. Though often not the explicit aims of these public policy interventions, this panel highlights their impacts on food insecurity around the world. The first two papers take a global perspective. Using the Food and Agriculture Organisations Food Insecurity Experience Scale, which was included in the Gallup World Poll over 2014-2017, they explore how different country-level trade and family policies relate to individual-level food insecurity outcomes, exploring effects for different country contexts and household types. Next, an overview of analyses exploring the impacts of policy interventions in Canada is provided, followed by a paper presenting a quasi-experimental quantitative study looking specifically at how the introduction of the Canada Child Benefit in 2016 impacted household food insecurity among households with children. Lastly, a pan-European examination of the rise in food charity explores the role of welfare retrenchment in driving this trend in different European country contexts. Together, these papers explore the sensitivity of food insecurity to public policy changes, offering opportunity to reflect on the best way forward to meet the aim of food security for all by 2030.
