Abstract
AbstractSince 2009, the UK has witnessed marked increases in the rate of sanctions applied to unemployment insurance claimants, as part of a wider agenda of austerity and welfare reform. In 2013, over one million sanctions were applied, stopping benefit payments for a minimum of four weeks and potentially leaving people facing economic hardship and driving them to use food banks. Here we explore whether sanctioning is associated with food bank use by linking data from The Trussell Trust Foodbank Network with records on sanctioning rates across 259 local authorities in the UK. After accounting for local authority differences and time trends, the rate of adults fed by food banks rose by an additional 3.36 adults per 100,000 (95% CI: 1.71 to 5.01) as the rate of sanctioning increased by 10 per 100,000 adults. The availability of food distribution sites affected how tightly sanctioning and food bank usage were associated (p< 0.001); in areas with few distribution sites, rising sanctions led to smaller increases in food bank usage. In conclusion, sanctioning is closely linked with rising food bank usage, but the impact of sanctioning on household food insecurity is not fully reflected in available data.
Highlights
Insufficient and insecure household incomes, short-term income losses, put households at risk of food insecurity – that is, inadequate access to food (Leete and Bania, 2010; Loopstra and Tarasuk, 2013; Ribar and Hamrick, 2003; Tarasuk et al, 2014; Huang et al, 2010)
We investigate whether the impact of sanctioning on food insecurity may not be reflected in Trussell Trust food bank usage figures where their food banks are less available, thereby providing evidence that the true impact of sanctioning on hunger is potentially obscured by the data available
We examined the interaction between change in the number of sanctions applied and the level of food bank operations in a given local authorityyear, namely the number of distribution sites and the number of operating hours
Summary
Insufficient and insecure household incomes, short-term income losses, put households at risk of food insecurity – that is, inadequate access to food (Leete and Bania, 2010; Loopstra and Tarasuk, 2013; Ribar and Hamrick, 2003; Tarasuk et al, 2014; Huang et al, 2010). A growing body of evidence shows how government policies can either increase or reduce household food insecurity. One aspect of social security policy that may increase food insecurity among low-income households is the practice of sanctioning, which abrogates financial support to unemployed persons receiving unemployment insurance if they fail to meet criteria for seeking work. Benefit conditionality and sanctioning in social security systems Internationally, there has been increasing experimentation with using active labour market programmes to incentivise changes in behaviour among social. Sanctioning penalties differ depending on context but, generally, the threat of sanctioning (and the sanctions themselves) is assumed to incentivise unemployed persons to seek employment and reduce potential gaming behaviour (Watts et al, 2014; Venn, 2012). Others impose a penalty of reduced income support for only 1–2 weeks (Venn, 2012) or stop payments altogether
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