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Read our new publication on food insecurity amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our new study,“Food insecurity amid the COVID-19 pandemic: food charity, government assistance and employment”, published in Canadian Public Policy, looks at the face of food insecurity in the early days of the pandemic as it relates to employment and the new federal funding for food charity. We analyzed data from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Perspective Survey Series 2 (CCPS-2), an online survey of all ten provinces in May 2020.
Simply having a job does not protect someone from food insecurity. Before the pandemic, 65% of food-insecure households relied on wages and salaries as their main source of income in 2017-2018. Which workers were most vulnerable to food insecurity when the pandemic hit?
People who continued to work outside the home (e.g., essential workers), those who had been working from home before the pandemic and continued to do so (e.g., customer service representatives), those who thought job loss was imminent, and those who stopped working due COVID-related business closure or layoffs. Also at very high risk of food insecurity were working-aged people outside the workforce entirely.
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