Housing affordability and the adequacy of household food expenditures among Canadian households

Abstract

Research suggests that housing circumstances may underpin the vulnerability of some low-income households to food insecurity. To explore the relationship between housing affordability and food access, data from the 2001 Survey of Household Spending (n = 16,091), a nationally-representative Canadian expenditure survey, was analyzed. The adequacy of food spending was assessed in relation to the cost of the Nutritious Food Basket (NFB), which represents a basic nutritional diet. As the proportion of household income allocated to shelter increased, the ratio of food spending to the cost of the NFB declined significantly. As housing consumed more than 30% of income, the ratio fell below 1, affirming at a population level the notion of affordable housing as that which consumes 30% or less of income. Stratifying households by a categorical income variable indicated more pronounced inverse relationships between share of income consumed by shelter and adequacy of food spending as income declined. Interestingly, the receipt of housing subsidies (a response to affordability problems typically functioning to fix rent at 30% of income) was not associated with higher adequacy of food spending among low-income households. Our findings highlight affordable housing as a potential policy lever to alleviate problems of food insecurity among low-income households, but suggest that current interventions are inadequate.