Project Details
Layman's description
Funder: European Research Council
Title: Families and Food in Hard Times
Value: £1,054,567
Description: Food poverty in the global North is emerging as an urgent social and moral concern, increasingly recognised as a central issue in the field of health inequalities in industrialised countries. With widening income disparity in Austerity Europe and ‘the end of cheap food’, these effects are being exacerbated. The study applies a mixed-methods international comparative case study design to understand the causes and consequences of food poverty and their relationship to social structures and public policies in three European countries. The research design provides for ‘a contrast of contexts’ in relation to conditions of austerity, focusing on Portugal, where poor families with children appear to have been most affected by economic retrenchment, the UK, which is experiencing substantial cuts in benefits to poor families, and Norway which, in comparison with most societies, is highly egalitarian in terms of income and has not been subject to austerity measures. The specific objectives of the study are: (1) to examine and compare the extent of food insecurity in Portugal, the UK and Norway by conducting secondary analysis of international quantitative data (EU-SILC and HBSC); (2) to explore and compare the experiences, perspectives and understandings of children and young people (aged 11-15 years) and parents in low-income families in rural and urban areas in Portugal, the UK and Norway, by applying a range of in-depth qualitative methods; (3) to develop the methodology in this area through the use of a multi-method comparative research approach; (4) to inform the intervention and advocacy work of NGOs, policymakers and practitioners by engaging with them in relation to the study’s findings at various stages of the research.
Title: Families and Food in Hard Times
Value: £1,054,567
Description: Food poverty in the global North is emerging as an urgent social and moral concern, increasingly recognised as a central issue in the field of health inequalities in industrialised countries. With widening income disparity in Austerity Europe and ‘the end of cheap food’, these effects are being exacerbated. The study applies a mixed-methods international comparative case study design to understand the causes and consequences of food poverty and their relationship to social structures and public policies in three European countries. The research design provides for ‘a contrast of contexts’ in relation to conditions of austerity, focusing on Portugal, where poor families with children appear to have been most affected by economic retrenchment, the UK, which is experiencing substantial cuts in benefits to poor families, and Norway which, in comparison with most societies, is highly egalitarian in terms of income and has not been subject to austerity measures. The specific objectives of the study are: (1) to examine and compare the extent of food insecurity in Portugal, the UK and Norway by conducting secondary analysis of international quantitative data (EU-SILC and HBSC); (2) to explore and compare the experiences, perspectives and understandings of children and young people (aged 11-15 years) and parents in low-income families in rural and urban areas in Portugal, the UK and Norway, by applying a range of in-depth qualitative methods; (3) to develop the methodology in this area through the use of a multi-method comparative research approach; (4) to inform the intervention and advocacy work of NGOs, policymakers and practitioners by engaging with them in relation to the study’s findings at various stages of the research.
Key findings
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10127576/1/Families-and-Food-in-Hard-Times.pdf
| Status | Finished |
|---|---|
| Effective start/end date | 1/05/14 → 30/04/19 |
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