The role of data in addressing food insecurity

The role of data in addressing food insecurity

Frontier Economics and Mime worked with the Open Data Institute (ODI) to consider the role of data in addressing food insecurity.

We are defining food insecurity as the inability of individuals and households to access a nutritious diet. A household is therefore experiencing food insecurity if they “cannot (or are uncertain about whether they can) get an adequate quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways.”

The report highlights the sizeable gaps in government and third sector data when it comes to knowing who is expecting food insecurity, where they are and what is being done about it. It also draws together data sets to paint a picture of hunger in the UK today, where food price inflation currently stands at 13.1%.

The report is accompanied by a digital tool that shows some of the variety of open data held at national and local authority level across England. It allows users to see how various parts of England rank across the food poverty indices and examine measures of food poverty across individual local authorities.

Our data analysis shows that there is a marked difference in food poverty across ethnic, social and geographic groups:

9% of households with children are food insecure

21% of households headed by a Black individual and 12% of Bangladeshi households are food insecure

11% of homes in North East and 9% in Inner London are in food poverty

The true scale of this rising food poverty is unknown. Sizeable gaps in the collection, timely publication and availability of data mean that government and charities often lack high quality insights to enable affirmative action.

To find out more about the research you can download the full report here

For further information please contact media@frontier-economics.com or call +44 (0) 20 7031 7000.