A1382
Title: Granular insights into food poverty: SAE-based estimates using HBS and healthy diet cost data
Authors: Ilaria Benedetti - University of Tuscia (Italy)
Stefano Marchetti - Dipartimento di Economia e Management, Universita di Pisa (Italy) [presenting]
Haoran Yang - Univerita di Pisa (Italy)
Abstract: Ensuring the affordability of healthy and sustainable diets (HSDs) is a key challenge for food policy and social equity. The aim is to present a statistical framework to estimate the prevalence of food poverty across Italy's 107 provinces, using survey microdata and web-based price information. Household-level food consumption data from the Italian Household Budget Survey (HBS) 2022 are combined with monthly food basket costs derived from webscraped price data collected by the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy. The food poverty indicator is defined by comparing household food expenditure to the theoretical cost of adhering to HSDs, adjusted by demographic needs. Due to limited sample sizes at the subnational level, a small area estimation (SAE) area-level approach is implemented to produce reliable provincial estimates. All computations were performed in the ADELE secure environment for official microdata. By means of spatially disaggregated policy indicators, actionable insights are provided for monitoring food affordability inequalities and guiding targeted interventions.
