Food insecurity, subjective well-being and the use of social networking services in Brazil between 2014 and 2018

Abstract

The great Brazilian recession was the most marked drop in economic activity in Brazil between the end of the Second World War and the Covid-19 pandemics. This economic crisis may have long lasting and non-anticipated negative consequences on Food Insecurity (FI) and on Subjective Well-Being (SWB). In addition, SWB is increasing linked to the use of Social Networking Services (SNS). The paper used data from World Value Survey (WVS) and logistic and ordered logistic models to empirically test a few hypotheses. The empirical results showed that: FI is negatively correlated with life satisfaction, but not with happiness; FI is unrelated to SNS use as still few people use them and the population groups that suffer from FI insecurity poorly overlap with the one that use SNS daily; SWB had positive relationships with SNS when the use was not very widespread; Associations between SWB and SNS use became negative as SNS use became more widespread.