Beyond Income: Social Protection Spending and Food Insecurity in Europe

This paper investigates the effect of social protection spending on mitigating food insecurity across Europe between 2005 and 2023. Despite strong economic development, food insecurity remains a major challenge, reflecting persistent socio-economic vulnerabilities worsened by crises such as the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. Using longitudinal microdata from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we estimate a logit model with random individual effects and fixed country effects to analyze its determinants, while accounting for cross-country heterogeneity in welfare systems. The results show that higher social protection spending is associated with a 0.30 percentage-point reduction in food insecurity, with effects that are robust and stronger during economic downturns. This improvement is mainly mediated through income. These findings highlight social protection as a central instrument of food-security policy in high-income countries, where food insecurity is driven less by aggregate food availability than by unequal access, affordability constraints, and household exposure to income shocks. The results suggest that food policy should not be limited to food aid or supply-side interventions but should also include income-support mechanisms capable of protecting vulnerable households from trade-offs between food and other essential expenditures.