Open Democracy
What do we mean by food inequality?
David Beck: If you’ve got enough income, you can have food that’s good for you and healthy. If you don’t have enough income, then you’re usually left with the stuff that’s cheap. Inexpensive food is usually filled with salt, fat, sugar and isn’t very good for you. It can lead to other health implications in the future.
BTS: So the poverty premium of food is that you save money by buying cheap food now, but end up with expensive, negative health outcomes later.
David: That’s exactly what it is. If you’re on a low income, food is expensive and healthy food is more expensive. If you’re on a very low income and you’ve got children, for example, young children may not want to try healthier foods – they spit out the broccoli. If you’re struggling, you’re going to avoid buying broccoli because you assume it will be wasted.
Restricted income usually results in a restricted diet. The latter is a result of poverty.
BTS: Can you give us a sense of the English food bank landscape? I heard this country now has more food banks than McDonald’s.
David: We do. In 2012, the Department for Work and Pensions brought in a new policy called the Welfare Reform Act. Iain Duncan Smith was the work and pensions secretary at the time, the chancellor was George Osborne and David Cameron was the prime minister. The act ushered in universal credit and the bedroom tax.
Pre-universal credit, people would have been paid weekly, fortnightly or sometimes monthly depending on how their particular assistance was set up. The different pots of money coming in at different times created a trickle effect for the recipient.
Universal credit is paid monthly. This was supposed to nudge people into thinking, “Well, if I can handle this money every month then I’ll be OK. I can go and get a job because that pays monthly as well.” But it made people feel very insecure. People struggled with it immediately.
What happened then was the charity sector, led by churches, came in as food banks. That’s when they really started to ramp up.
BTS: I can see why collapsing benefits into a single, monthly payment would theoretically increase stability. It makes intuitive sense. So what went wrong? Was there just some crunching gears at the beginning because transitions are hard? Or did universal credit create sustained instability?
David: Sustained instability. Initially universal credit was paid six weeks in retrospect. That made people think straight away that: “I’ve got no money for six weeks. I’ve got to pay rent, mortgages or I’ve got to feed my kids. How am I going to survive this?” The instability was built into the system right from the get-go.
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