Food insecurity, austerity, and household food production in Greece, 2009-2014

Despite the severity of the European economic crisis, its relation to key aspects of material deprivation remains understudied. In this paper, I use the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions dataset to analyze household food insecurity in austerity-ridden Greece between 2009 and 2014. First, I show that low-income, low-asset and non-EU citizens, as well as households in Athens and island regions, are more likely to experience higher rates of food insecurity. Second, low-income and immigrant households experience disproportionate increases in food insecurity during the crisis; low-income and single-mother households experience higher increases in child food insecurity during the same period. Third, I examine the hypothesis that households turned to the land during the crisis. I show evidence of a negative association between food self-provisioning and food insecurity; however, the share of households that produce food decreases during the crisis, casting doubt on self-provisioning as a widespread coping strategy.