Paper, Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)

Since the beginning of the 2000s, the Brazilian Household Food Insecurity measurement Scale (EBIA) has been the official measure of household food insecurity (FI) in Brazil. But it was only in 2017-2018 that EBIA was included in the National Household Budget Survey (Pesquisa de Orçamentos Familiares – POF) which collects data on household’s expenditure on goods and services (food expenditure, in particular). The main objective of this paper is to identify the food costs of the vulnerable populations at risk of food insecurity (FI) in Brazil. The methodology is based on the construction of corresponding spatial price indexes obtained from POF conducted in 2017-2018, which collected data from different Brazilian geographical areas. It is worth noting that Brazil also does not evaluate official spatial price indexes which specifies differences in the cost of living among different Brazilian regions. Following the EBIA, we identify the vulnerable population as one that is at risk of mild, moderate, and severe food insecurity. Our study points to relevant disparities in price indexes between the regions of the country for this already population vulnerable to food insecurity that represents 60% of the Brazilian population. Among more than 40 food products selected for product price analysis, chicken was the product that recorded the highest average monthly household expenditure, with the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo being the geographic context that presented the greatest positive variation in relation to Brazil, 0,5% above. The average household expenses with products classified as fresh or minimally processed represented 55.5% of the total expenses for Brazil. Next was the expenses for ultra-processed foods, 26.3%. The share of processed foods and processed culinary ingredients was 13.4% and 4.8%, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that is possible to investigate, simultaneously, data based on food expenditure and on food insecurity in the same survey. This study also offers a food regional price index for both, the whole population and the vulnerable one. Finally, these indexes can be used in future studies to provide information for public policies on poverty.