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3 days ago · The prevalence of severe food insecurity was notably higher in 2022 among households reliant on employment insurance or workers’ compensation as their main source of income (4.6% in 2021 versus 12.8% in 2022), those receiving social assistance as their main source of income (17.3% in 2021 versus 23.9% in 2022), those with other or no income (3.4% in 2021 versus 8.8% in 2022), and those in ...
ehold food insecurity in 2021, at 13.1%.Of particular concern is the very high prevalence of severe food insecurity in. Alberta (6.3%) and New Brunswick (5.9%). Severe food insecurity was lowest in Q. ebec (2.8%) and British Columbia (3.2%). (See Appendix C for a detailed breakdown of hou. ehold foo.
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- Household food insecurity through the lens of the Canadian Income Survey
- Household food insecurity through the lens of the Canadian Community Health Survey
- Comparing the results of the two surveys
- What accounts for the difference?
- Other comparators
- Where do we go from here?
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Published by: The Public Health Agency of Canada
Date published: October 2022
ISSN: 2368-738X
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Valerie Tarasuk, PhD; Andrée-Anne Fafard St-Germain, PhD; Timmie Li, MSCom
https://doi.org/10.24095/hpcdp.42.10.04
Author reference
Department of Nutritional Sciences, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
January 2022 marked the first public release of food insecurity data from the CIS with results for 2018 and 2019,Footnote 18 followed in March by updated estimates for CIS 2018 and 2019, plus results for 2020.Footnote 28 Based on CIS 2018, 6 099 000 people (16.8% of the population) in the 10 provinces were living in food-insecure households.Footnot...
In February 2022, prevalence estimates from CCHS 2019 and 2020 were published.Footnote 29 Data are not available for all 10 provinces in CCHS 2019 because British Columbia declined to measure food insecurity during this cycle. CCHS 2020 results were based on online interviews conducted in September to December 2020 in the 10 provinces. In a departu...
To summarize, the analyses of CIS and CCHS both indicate that the prevalence of household food insecurity in Canada was lower in 2020 than it had been before the pandemic. This finding contradicts earlier reports of escalating food insecurity triggered by the pandemic,Footnote 25Footnote 30 but the decline is plausible given federal income supports, wage subsidies and various interventions to cap or reduce living costs during this period.Footnote 31
However, the results from CIS and CCHS provide very different impressions of the size of the problem of household food insecurity in Canada, both before and during the pandemic. The number of Canadians living in food-insecure households based on CCHS 2017–2018 is 1.7 million less than the number based on CIS 2018, and the latter estimate does not include data for the territories. The different units of analysis reported for 2020 complicate comparisons for that year, but, assuming Canadians under 12 years of age have a similar rate of food insecurity to those 12 and older, the CCHS results suggest that fewer than 1 in 10 Canadians were affected by household food insecurity in 2020,Footnote 29 whereas this ratio is closer to 1 in 6 based on the CIS results.Footnote 28
Household food insecurity is similarly correlated with other indicators of social and economic disadvantage in the CCHS and the CIS,Footnote 18Footnote 29 suggesting that the surveys are capturing a similar problem. A detailed examination of household-level prevalence estimates for moderate/severe food insecurity from CIS 2018 and CCHS 2017–2018 revealed that between-survey differences in population weight calibrations and the imputation of missing responses accounted for only a small fraction of the discrepancy.Footnote 18 The authors suggested part of the explanation could lie in the higher response rate to CIS 2018 (77.4%, vs. 61.5% in CCHS 2017–2018), a phenomenon attributed to the fact that the CIS is a supplement to the mandatory Labour Force Survey.Footnote 18 While both surveys adjust for nonresponse, they do this differently, and the effects of the adjustments are impossible to gauge.Footnote 18 Additionally, some survey participants might respond differently to the HFSSM depending on whether these questions are posed in the context of questions about health and health behaviours (i.e. CCHS) or questions about employment and household economics (i.e. CIS), although any such effect is difficult to identify, let alone quantify.
The discrepancy between CCHS 2017–2018 and CIS 2018 estimates pales in comparison to the discrepancy between the estimates from CCHS 2020 and CIS 2019 and 2020. Assuming children under 12 years of age have a similar prevalence of food insecurity to those 12 and older, there is more than a six-percentage point difference in the estimates from CIS 2019 and CIS 2020 compared to CCHS 2020, even though these surveys cover a similar time period. The much lower prevalence in CCHS 2020 may relate to the very low response rate for this survey (24.6%, vs. 80.3% for CIS 2019 and 76.6% for CIS 2020),Footnote 29 but more analyses are required to assess this potential bias. The response rate draws into serious question the population representativeness and reliability of results from CCHS 2020.
Since its adoption by Health Canada, the HFSSM has been included in one other cross-sectional population survey conducted in the 10 provinces: the 2010 Survey of Household Spending (SHS 2010). This survey also yielded a higher prevalence of food insecurity than the CCHS. Because of an error in the administration of the 8 child-referenced items of the HFSSM on SHS 2010, household food insecurity status was determined using only the adult scale, but this yielded a weighted prevalence of 16.6% (95% CI: 15.6–18.5; estimated by the authors using the master datafile). The decision of the governments of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island not to measure food insecurity on CCHS 2010 precludes estimation of a prevalence for all 10 provinces that year, but the national prevalence estimate from CCHS 2011 (including the territories) was 12.3%.Footnote 32
The prevalence estimates from SHS 2010 and CCHS 2011 are not perfectly comparable, but their differences are unlikely to explain the large discrepancy. The omission of child-referenced items from SHS 2010 would only bias that estimate downward, and the inclusion of the territories in CCHS 2011 would, if anything, lead to a slightly higher prevalence than for the provinces alone. A comparison of prevalence estimates from CCHS 2010 and 2011 for provinces with data for both years indicates only one statistically significant difference: an increase in Quebec from 2010 to 2011.Footnote 32 This suggests that if we had data for all 10 provinces from CCHS 2010, the prevalence would probably be lower than the estimate from CCHS 2011. The magnitude and direction of the discrepancy between CCHS 2011 and SHS 2010 is consistent with the observed difference between pre-pandemic estimates from CCHS and CIS, adding credence to the idea that the prevalence of household food insecurity may be underestimated on CCHS.
As Canada begins to emerge from the pandemic and the income supports and wage subsidies implemented to deal with this crisis begin to be dismantled, it is more important than ever that we monitor the prevalence and severity of household food insecurity. Only through reliable, annual, national measurement of this problem can we begin to understand the impact of current federal and provincial/territorial government responses to it, set targets for food insecurity reduction and develop effective, evidence-based intervention strategies. With the HFSSM now included on both the CIS and CCHS, we have an important choice to make. The recent data releases indicate clearly that these two surveys are not interchangeable.
The finding that different population surveys yield different prevalence estimates is not unique to Canada. Similar discrepancies are common in the US, inarguably the world leader in food insecurity measurement. The HFSSM and its derivatives appear on several surveys there, but population prevalence estimates are derived from the Current Population Survey, selected for its large sample size, state-level representativeness and timeliness for annual reporting.Footnote 33
We recommend that the CIS be used as the survey vehicle for all food insecurity monitoring in the future, because the consistently higher response rate of CIS suggests that this survey yields a more population-representative estimate of food insecurity than the CCHS. Given the serious health implications of household food insecurity, it is imperative that the population prevalence not be systematically underestimated.
The CIS has three other important advantages over the CCHS. First, it is designed to furnish prevalence estimates annually, enabling monitoring that can never be achieved with the CCHS, given the practice of only including the HFSSM as mandatory content on alternate cycles of that survey. Second, the timely release of data tables from the CISFootnote 28 and regular updating of prevalence rates for moderate/severe food insecurity on the Poverty Dashboard mean that stakeholders and policy makers can use the results of this survey to inform decisions in real time.Footnote 34 We maintain that marginal food insecurity should be included in the Dashboard estimates,Footnote 16 but knowledge users can obtain this prevalence from the data tables.Footnote 28 Third, the monitoring of food insecurity via a population-based survey specifically designed to gather information on income, labour market activities and other financial circumstances facilitates policy analyses and program evaluations to inform the development of effective interventions to address food insecurity.
May 16, 2024 · More people are living in food-insecure households. In 2022, 16.9% of Canadians were food insecure, compared with 12.9% in 2021. Overall, the proportion of individuals in households experiencing food insecurity has increased by 5.3 percentage points from 2018 to 2022. Close to 1 in 10 (9.9%) Canadians were living in poverty in 2022.
Aug 16, 2022 · In 2021, 15.9% of households in the ten provinces experienced some level of food insecurity in the previous 12 months. That amounts to 5.8 million people, including almost 1.4 million children under the age of 18, living in food-insecure households. Users should also not compare statistics from CIS, described in this report, with previous ...
Feb 16, 2022 · Table 1 presents the distribution of Canadians by sociodemographic characteristics and household food security status. Both before and during the pandemic, those reporting higher levels of household food insecurity were younger, with less than a high school education, living in lone-parent-led households, living in households reliant on social assistance or employment insurance as their ...
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Aug 19, 2022 · Toronto food banks face empty shelves amid record demand, advocates warn. In Ontario, one in six households, or 16.1 per cent, were food insecure in 2021, a number equal to 2.3 million people. As ...
