A1580
Title: Measuring food poverty across regions and vulnerable groups: Subnational evidence from Italy during high inflation
Authors: Ilaria Benedetti - University of Tuscia (Italy) [presenting]
Tiziana Laureti - University of Tuscia (Italy)
Luca Secondi - University of Tuscia (Italy)
Abstract: Food poverty is a key dimension of material deprivation, particularly during periods of high inflation, when rising prices disproportionately affect vulnerable households. An examination of regional and sociodemographic disparities in food poverty in Italy over 2021-2023, a period marked by a sharp increase in food prices, is conducted using microdata from the Italian Household Budget Survey (HBS). The analysis adopts a distribution-sensitive approach, showing that the inflationary shock was strongly regressive: lower-expenditure households experienced higher effective inflation due to their consumption structure, with a larger share devoted to essential goods, especially food. A central contribution concerns the measurement of food poverty at the sub-national level. Given the complex Survey design and the nonlinear nature of poverty indicators, standard variance estimators may be unreliable for small domains. This issue is addressed by implementing resampling techniques to obtain robust estimates of sampling variability and enable valid inference across regions and population subgroups. Results reveal significant territorial disparities, with higher food poverty in southern regions and smaller municipalities. The findings highlight the importance of robust sub-national measurement for policy design, as national averages may conceal substantial inequalities.
