Food insecurity and inflation: An empirical descriptive framework

Abstract

This paper examines the statistical association between food inflation and food insecurity using official Eurostat data. The results indicate that food insecurity is more strongly associated with HICP for food and nonalcoholic beverages than with all items HICP, while no meaningful association is found with HICP for electricity, gas, and other fuels. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a baseline linear specification and an optimized two-regime empirical approach that improves the descriptive fit of the observed data. The study contributes a concise empirical framework for examining how food inflation is statistically related to food insecurity.