Young and hungry in the United Kingdom: a qualitative study of youth food insecurity in Edinburgh and London

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Charlotte McPhersonKing’s College London, UK

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Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, food insecurity was rising steadily and attracting growing concern across the UK. Young people are disproportionately more exposed to food insecurity because of their higher risks of poverty, destitution and homelessness, and because of discriminations in the labour market and social security system. Despite this, very little is known about youth food insecurity in the UK, where the assumption that young people can rely on parental support prevails. This article draws on qualitative interviews with 13 young people, aged 18–26, conducted during the height of nationwide lockdowns in Edinburgh and London in 2020. By engaging with young people from a range of circumstances, this article provides important insights into experiences of youth food insecurity. It finds that while youth food insecurity stems from the familiar trigger of low income, young people are not only more exposed to this risk, but also encounter additional risks linked to being young, including leaving home for the first time. Similarly, this article illustrates that while people of all ages generally prefer to manage their food insecurity independently due to the stigma attached to food insecurity, notions of independence seem particularly important to the young people and their narratives of emerging adulthood in this study, with implications for their (dis)engagement with support. The findings challenge ingrained policy assumptions about young people, and suggest a need for significant policy activity around youth food insecurity, which has been troublingly overlooked in the UK.

Abstract

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, food insecurity was rising steadily and attracting growing concern across the UK. Young people are disproportionately more exposed to food insecurity because of their higher risks of poverty, destitution and homelessness, and because of discriminations in the labour market and social security system. Despite this, very little is known about youth food insecurity in the UK, where the assumption that young people can rely on parental support prevails. This article draws on qualitative interviews with 13 young people, aged 18–26, conducted during the height of nationwide lockdowns in Edinburgh and London in 2020. By engaging with young people from a range of circumstances, this article provides important insights into experiences of youth food insecurity. It finds that while youth food insecurity stems from the familiar trigger of low income, young people are not only more exposed to this risk, but also encounter additional risks linked to being young, including leaving home for the first time. Similarly, this article illustrates that while people of all ages generally prefer to manage their food insecurity independently due to the stigma attached to food insecurity, notions of independence seem particularly important to the young people and their narratives of emerging adulthood in this study, with implications for their (dis)engagement with support. The findings challenge ingrained policy assumptions about young people, and suggest a need for significant policy activity around youth food insecurity, which has been troublingly overlooked in the UK.

Introduction

In the last decade, rising food bank usage has become a source of escalating public concern in the United Kingdom (UK), where it has come to symbolise the country’s endemic problems with poverty and inequality (Cooper and Dumpleton, 2013). The UK’s largest provider of food banks, the Trussell Trust, distributed 2.5 million emergency food parcels in 2020/21, up from 61,000 in 2010/11 (Bramley et al, 2021). The significant increase in food bank usage has seen food insecurity become the subject of increasing scrutiny, intensified further by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has triggered further alarming rises in food insecurity (Trussell Trust, 2020).

This article is focused on the experiences of young people, a group that has been largely overlooked in relation to food insecurity. Young people are reported to be particularly reluctant to engage with food banks, which has contributed to the ‘hidden’ nature of this social problem (Priestley, 2018). However, the lack of attention to food insecurity among young people is still surprising, given evidence that has long demonstrated their enhanced exposure to known risk factors of food insecurity, including poverty and homelessness (Watts et al, 2015; Fitzpatrick et al, 2018). Young people also experience discrimination in the labour market, housing market and social security system, which limits their ability to experience economic security (Goulden, 2018; ILO, 2020; Homeless Link, 2021).

Despite this evidence, however, relatively little is known about youth food insecurity. Particularly little is known about experiences of food insecurity among young adults who are not teenagers and who are not homeless in the UK. This article draws on qualitative research with young people aged 18–26 living in Edinburgh and London with previous and/or ongoing experiences of food insecurity to consider what factors drive food insecurity among young people, how they manage it, and their experiences of informal and formal food support.

Rising food insecurity in the UK in context

Rising food insecurity and food bank usage in the UK has occurred against a backdrop of economic downturn, austerity measures and significant welfare reform over the last decade. Welfare reform has been heavily linked to rising food insecurity, with the introduction and rollout of Universal Credit (UC) – the UK’s primary income support benefit – felt to be particularly influential (Trussell Trust, 2019). UC has been widely critiqued for its delayed payment structure and emphasis on sanctioning (Loopstra et al, 2018; Reeves and Loopstra, 2021), which have been found to drive destitution among claimants, leading to increased reliance on emergency food aid (MacLeod, 2019; Trussell Trust, 2019).

The global financial recession of 2008 had a significant impact on the labour market in the UK, leading to spikes in unemployment, particularly among young people (Major and Machin, 2020). More recently, prior to the pandemic, employment rates had improved (DWP, 2020), but this has coincided with historically high levels of in-work poverty, with recent analysis concluding that more than half of people in poverty now live in working households (Innes, 2020). These and other research findings (for example, Bailey, 2016; McBride et al, 2018) point to profound changes in the quality of employment, particularly in the lower rungs of the labour market, where young people are overwhelmingly employed (MacDonald, 2009).

It is in this fractured socio-economic context that, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic not only brought the UK’s problems with poverty and inequality into sharper relief, but also significantly exacerbated them (House of Lords, 2020; Parkes and McNeil, 2020). Food bank usage is at a record high across the UK. This has worsened significantly under the strain of the pandemic, with the Trussell Trust (2020) reporting an 89 per cent increase in need in April 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. It is important to note, however, that food bank usage has been rising steadily year-on-year in the UK since at least 2016 (Trussell Trust, 2020).

While food insecurity has occupied increasing research, policy and media attention in recent years, this has typically been concentrated on the experiences of family units, young children and older age adults (Cardoso et al, 2019; Purdam et al, 2019). There has been relatively little attention given to the experiences of young adults, despite evidence highlighting that food insecurity is a significant problem among young people, who are more at risk of experiencing it than other age groups (Dush et al, 2020; Institute for Social and Economic Research, 2020). This article will now review existing research around youth food insecurity.

Youth food insecurity

Young people are at a particularly high risk of experiencing food insecurity due to a range of factors. Research demonstrates that young people are at an enhanced risk of experiencing poverty and are more likely to experience destitution than older age groups in the UK (Eisenstadt, 2017; Whitham and Acik, 2019). Young people experience discrimination and disadvantage in the labour market that contributes to their economic precarity. Before the pandemic, youth unemployment had been falling in the UK over the last several years, but has remained consistently higher than the unemployment rate for older working-age people (House of Commons Library, 2020). Moreover, the relatively healthy employment rates pre- and ‘post’-pandemic mask the nature of this employment, with young people disproportionately likely to be underemployed in jobs that are low paid and insecure (Schoon and Bynner, 2017; Kalleberg, 2018).

Young people have also been particularly affected by welfare reform. Discrimination against them within the social security system is twofold, relating both to (i) allowances and entitlements, and (ii) sanctioning. On UC, single under-25s without dependent children receive 26 per cent less than over-25s (Social Security Advisory Committee, 2018). The rollout of UC has been strongly linked to rising food insecurity and poverty (Loopstra et al, 2018; Trussell Trust, 2019). This is significant because Sosenko et al’s (2019) comprehensive study of food insecurity found that a significantly higher proportion of young people (50 per cent) receive UC as opposed to other income support benefits than do over-25s.

Research has also revealed the disproportionate impact of the increasing emphasis on sanctioning on young people under the age of 25 (de Vries et al, 2017). Since the 1980s, welfare conditionality and punitive sanctioning have been mainstays of the British welfare state, which is the second harshest in the world (Immervoll and Knotz, 2018). A particularly harsh stance has crystallised around young people, however, for whom there is felt to be particularly few excuses to not be either ‘earning or learning’ (Watts and Fitzpatrick, 2014). The early-2010s saw greater sanctioning introduced for income support benefits, with under-25s accounting for 41 per cent of all sanctions between October 2012 and December 2013 (Watts et al, 2014). The rollout of UC, a benefit that is highly conditional, has intensified this discrimination against young people.

The limited research that has been conducted on youth food insecurity reveals it to be a typically hidden problem, due to a combination of factors that include the stigma attached to food insecurity and how young people prefer to manage it. The often hidden nature of young people’s food insecurity can be traced, in part, to young people’s emergent position in the life-course, with youth a time of life particularly devoted to establishing independence and where peer approval is felt to be particularly important (Arnett, 2000). These values coexist uneasily with seeking food aid (Priestley, 2018). Accordingly, young people are generally underrepresented in the usage statistics of food banks and other relevant support agencies (for example, Sosenko et al, 2019; Trussell Trust, 2020). Rather than this signifying a lack of need among young people, however, research suggests that this is linked to most young people being able to draw on familial support but also to young people preferring to conceal or alternatively manage their food insecurity (Waxman et al, 2016). Popkin et al (2016) note that ‘many food insecure [young people] may go unnoticed because of the great efforts they make to hide their hardship’.

Since the onset of COVID-19, many established strategies for managing food insecurity have been stretched to the limit or have become entirely unavailable. Research demonstrates that young people under the age of 25 were the worst impacted by the pandemic in the labour market (Joyce and Xu, 2020). Analysis of survey data from the Understanding Society survey (Institute for Economic and Social Research, 2020) indicates a notably higher prevalence of hunger among young people aged 16–24 in April 2020 than all other age groups. Qualitative research on food experiences during lockdown (Connors et al, 2020) uncovered distinctive impacts of the pandemic on the food insecurity of young people. It found that young people under 25 had already been living with considerable financial insecurity before the pandemic, which had tipped them into poverty.

The literature reviewed here indicates that youth food insecurity shares a number of commonalities with general experiences of food insecurity among other age groups, particularly in terms of it being primarily driven by low income and the preference for it to be managed through informal rather than formal support networks. However, research also suggests that not only are young people more likely to experience food insecurity, but also that there are distinctive drivers, experiences and impacts of food insecurity linked to being young. However, while there is extensive coverage of food insecurity among older adults and families, there is a troubling lack of attention paid to youth food insecurity, with young people’s underrepresentation among food bank users perhaps erroneously perceived as denoting a lack of need among this population. This article draws important attention to this overlooked group.

Methodology

This article draws on qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with a small group of young people, aged 18–26, between June and August 2020. The study adopted a qualitative research design to address the lack of qualitative research exploring food insecurity from young people’s own perspectives. Accordingly, in this study, the focus was less on quantifying young people’s food insecurity and more on the factors driving it and how it was experienced and managed.

The young people who participated in this study all lived in either Edinburgh or London, which were selected purposively on the basis of similarities in their demographic profiles and characteristics. Both are wealthy capital cities with sizeable youth populations, pronounced income and wealth inequalities and high living costs (NOMIS, 2022a; 2022b). London is significantly larger and is more ethnically diverse than Edinburgh. Situating the research in two places enabled any differences and similarities in experiences across the cities to be highlighted, providing a wider lens for the research.

Participants were sampled purposively based on their age falling between 18 and 26, and on the basis of current or previous experiences of food insecurity. This sampling criteria was established in efforts to encourage an older and more diverse sample of young people than in other studies of youth food insecurity, which have overwhelmingly been conducted with school-aged teenagers or homeless young people. Recruitment for this study was challenging due to it coinciding with stringent lockdown measures across the UK in response to the pandemic, which prevented me from visiting gatekeeping organisations to meet young people and promote the study to them directly. This meant that there was a greater reliance on recruiting through gatekeeping organisations at a time when these organisations were under intense pressure to provide services to young people remotely with fewer staff and resources. The original objective was to recruit 20 participants, ten from each city, but ultimately 13 young people participated; eight in Edinburgh and five in London (see Table 1).

Table 1:

Participant characteristics

Pseudonym Age Gender Location Housing status Employment status Access to family support
Kira 21 Female Edinburgh Social housing Part-time job (furloughed) Estranged from parents
Sasha 21 Female Edinburgh Private rental sector Self-employed (full-time student) Estranged from parents
Alex 22 Non-binary Edinburgh Private rental sector Part-time job (furloughed) (full-time student) Limited support available from father
Cara 22 Female Edinburgh Social housing Part-time job Limited support available from mother
Leo 22 Male Edinburgh Private rental sector Part-time job (full-time student) Estranged from parents
Lewis 23 Male Edinburgh Private rental sector Part-time job Regular support available from parents
Faye 25 Female Edinburgh Social housing Part-time job Limited support available from mother
Lucy 26 Female Edinburgh Private rental sector Full-time job (furloughed) Regular support available from father
Holly 18 Female London Supported accommodation Unemployed Estranged from parents
Stacey 20 Female London Supported accommodation Unemployed Limited support available from mother
Rachel 22 Female London Supported accommodation Full-time job (furloughed) Estranged from parents
Lily 23 Female London Supported accommodation Unemployed Estranged from parents
Omar 25 Male London Supported accommodation Unemployed No access to support from parents

There are important distinctions between the profiles of the Edinburgh and London samples that stem from how they were recruited to the study. All of the participants in London were recruited through a youth homelessness organisation and, as a result, were all living in supported accommodation at the time of interview. Efforts were made to recruit young people through a range of organisations in London, but the homelessness organisation was the only one to respond within the short timeframe of the study. As I was unable to travel to London to recruit more directly, I relied solely on the response of gatekeepers for the London sample. The participants in Edinburgh were recruited through a range of sampling techniques (gatekeepers, direct advertising and participant referrals), enabled by living in Edinburgh at the time of the research, and this is reflected in the more diverse profile of this group.

Given the profile and small size of the sample, some groups of young people have not knowingly been included in this study, including young people with disabilities. Eleven out of the 13 participants were British-born, and relatively little is known about the ethnic composition of the participants as this information was not collected. Information about the participants’ social class backgrounds was also not explicitly collected, but given that the majority of participants lived in supported accommodation or social housing, and that most described experiences of persistent economic insecurity in their interviews, it can be assumed that most, if not all, of the participants were from backgrounds of low socioeconomic status (SES).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants. Due to the restrictions associated with the pandemic, the interviews were all conducted remotely over the phone, lasting between 30 and 50 minutes on average. Each participant was issued with a £20 supermarket or takeaway voucher to thank them for their contribution to the study. Each participant was taken through an informed consent process over the phone prior to being interviewed, where they were informed of their rights and how their data would be used before signing a consent form. Given the sensitive and potentially distressing subject matter of the research, I spent time prior to the interviews explaining to participants that if at any point they would like to pause or stop the interview, or decline to answer any questions, they were within their rights to do so. I also ensured that I had information about relevant local and national support agencies, should any participants request support relating to their food insecurity, or in the event that a participants’ testimony led me to be concerned for their welfare. Finally, because the interviews were conducted remotely, it was more challenging for me to be alert to how my questions were potentially emotionally impacting the participants. I made regular checks on the participants’ welfare throughout interviews to counter this and to ensure their consent was continuous.

This article focuses on the findings of the study that relate to the causes of participants’ food insecurity, how they managed it and their experiences of formal/informal food support. Data was coded and analysed thematically, following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six analytical steps: (1) data familiarisation and the identification of initial ideas; (2) coding of the data; (3) sorting the data under potential themes; (4) reviewing these themes by cross-checking them against the codes and the entire dataset; (5) refining and solidifying the themes; and (6) identifying relevant extracts from the data that are illustrative of the themes and the dataset as a whole. All participant names have been replaced with pseudonyms.

Findings

Drivers of youth food insecurity

This study uncovered a range of causes behind youth food insecurity, many of which were consistent with the findings of previous research. These included both those that are widely recognised to trigger food insecurity more broadly across a range of age groups, but also some that appear more distinctively tied to youth.

Low incomes and job insecurity

Unsurprisingly, low income was the root cause of all the participants’ previous or ongoing food insecurity, and this was the case before the pandemic, even for the employed participants. The participants’ incomes, whether from wages or income support benefits, were simply insufficient to reliably meet essential needs, with food insecurity the most common outcome. Those in employment were heavily dependent on overtime, for example, the unpredictable availability of which – whether through lockdown or at other times – meant economic hardship was a familiar risk and experience:

I was only on a part-time job, but I was getting overtime the first two months. Then they cut all our overtime, and so that was my moment I was living on £400 a month, paying all my bills and… sofa-surfing, as well as having to travel to work every day. (Sasha, 21, Edinburgh)

What is important is that being employed did not automatically protect the participants from food insecurity, largely due to the nature of their employment, which was typically insecure, part-time/fixed-term and low paid. While information was not directly sought from the participants about their social class, most described lengthy and recurring experiences of economic insecurity indicative of low SES backgrounds, and as such none had savings to fall back on or to supplement their incomes with. One participant, Lucy, 26, had a full-time job but relied on a monthly allowance from her father to cope with the costs of living independently. As this article will go on to discuss, however, this was not a resource evenly available to all of the participants. These findings challenge a range of ingrained policy assumptions in the UK, including both that employment is sufficient to protect against poverty among young people and the rationale that young people are paid less, in terms of wages and benefits, because they are able to draw on support from family and have lower outgoings than older adults.

Living costs and leaving home

In the case of this study, which was located in Edinburgh and London, participants’ low incomes were mixed with the high living costs in these cities, further contributing to food insecurity. Participants described battling against high housing and food costs, with some having moved into these cities from smaller towns or different cities, triggering food insecurity:

I came to Edinburgh and just didn’t really properly think things through… I really didn’t have money because of the expensive rent… I didn’t realise how expensive food shopping was here, compared to in smaller towns. It all just took me a bit by shock and I kind of got myself into a financial rut. (Lewis, 23, Edinburgh)

Relatedly, another driving factor behind several of the participants’ food insecurity was moving out of the family home; a good example of a risk factor to food insecurity that is more distinctively mapped to youth. When participants were asked if they could pinpoint the beginning of their food insecurity, most pointed to leaving their family household for the first time:

I would say since I moved in… When I became a bit more independent, it was a bit of a struggle… I actually had to do my own shopping. I had my own money to budget with. I feel like it was fine when I was working and living at home, but then it got really downhill. (Stacey, 20, London)

Numerous participants had been shocked by the expense of living independently, causing them to reduce their food bills; the most flexible aspect of their budgets:

I wish I had all the money in the world… But of course, you don’t have a choice in paying your bills, like, I need to pay the rent, I need to pay my electricity, gas, water, council tax, all that. There’s no choice in that, and the food bill is the only thing you’ve got a little bit of control over in the sense that… if I need to do with £10 a week, I can make do. (Lucy, 26, Edinburgh)

Many of the participants felt that leaving the family household intersected with their lack of budgeting and cooking experience to trigger or compound food insecurity. Most had not had to balance budgets, shop for food or cook meals before they moved out, so had found these responsibilities new and challenging:

I think definitely if I knew how to cook healthier things with things that were cheaper in the shops… I think if there was a way I could find out how to cook better things, that would make my access to food a bit easier. (Cara, 22, Edinburgh)

As with moving out, the participants’ perceived lack of experience with budgeting and cooking are further examples of enhanced risk factors of food insecurity that are more closely linked with youth; a period of life marked by change, emerging independence and learning.

As has been established in the literature on youth food insecurity (for example, Johnson et al, 2020), homelessness and housing insecurity were major driving factors of food insecurity for many of the participants, for whom it did not just affect their ability to afford food, but also posed specific barriers to food security. Many had previously lived, or were currently residing, in supported accommodation, and reported a range of issues that worsened their food insecurity. Having their small amount of food stolen from communal kitchen spaces was raised by many participants, for example. Additionally, participants discussed having very limited private space for fresh/frozen foods, preventing them from building up a store of cheap and nutritious food:

I have a mini fridge and my fridge is literally the size of a drawer, so… I can’t store lots of food in the fridge and that’s what lasts long so, yes, it’s just a lot of issues. There was actually an incident where I did store some of my food in the communal freezer and my meat was going missing and stuff, so I just have to shop small now. (Stacey, 20, London)

These findings indicate distinctive challenges encountered by the London sample, who were all living in supported accommodation. Most of these participants’ food insecurity was worsened by being estranged from their families, which meant that they did not have access to financial support from relatives in the way that some of the young people in Edinburgh did.

Most of the participants who were not living in supported accommodation were sharing spaces with people in similar circumstances to them financially, and a number of the participants’ food insecurity was worsened by supporting others and prioritising other people’s food needs above their own (see Cairns, 2018):

I’ve got a habit of taking on a lot of people into my life if they’re in bad financial situations and stuff like that, so a lot of the time I split what I earn with people who live with me. (Sasha, 21, Edinburgh)

Others had benefited from sharing flats with friends and flatmates, who would share food with them when they had run out of money. Participants made frequent references to the impact of shared living on their food insecurity. These findings testify to the relational dimension of youth food insecurity, particularly given the norm of shared living among young people.

COVID-19 related drivers

The interviews were conducted with young people during the first major nationwide lockdown in the UK and the pandemic was a key factor in many of the participants’ food insecurity in number of ways. Its impact was most commonly associated with the significant reduction of the participants’ income, due either to furloughing or losing their jobs during lockdown.

The findings suggest that furlough has been a more difficult experience for young people, given their overrepresentation in zero hours and otherwise casualised forms of employment. Many had experienced substantial drops in income due to being furloughed on the basis of their contracted hours – a figure much lower than their typical number of hours worked:

If I was at work, I would obviously always do overtime, so I’d be making more money. Now obviously that I’m at home, it’s like I’m getting paid the exact amount because of my exact hours… It definitely is making it a lot worse. (Rachel, 22, London)

Others had been impacted by a lack of employee protections associated with casualised, precarious forms of employment that are overwhelmingly occupied by young people. For example, Holly had been working in a commission-based role doing door-to-door sales in London before the pandemic and as such had very few employee protections or rights to furlough provision when lockdown was imposed.

In Edinburgh, for students, lockdown had rendered an often already difficult summer period even more challenging. In Scotland, students of further and higher education are eligible for means-tested financial support through bursaries and student loans from the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS). This support is restricted to the academic year and therefore concludes at the end of spring, at which point students typically supplement their incomes through paid work or overtime. Lockdown conditions had made this near-impossible for the participants in the summer of 2020, however, and this was raised by every student in Edinburgh as a key factor in their food insecurity.

Complicating this further, some had been denied in their applications for UC, which excludes full-time students from eligibility. As such, some of the young people in Edinburgh were caught in a position of being furloughed to the value of far fewer hours than they would typically work, unable to make up shortfalls in their SAAS payments through work/overtime, and unable to claim UC:

I applied for benefits, but they told me because I’m about to enter my fourth year of a four-year degree, because I’m still in education, I don’t qualify for UC. My furlough pay is 80 per cent of ten hours… which is absolutely nothing. (Alex, 22, Edinburgh)

There are therefore a range of factors behind young people’s food insecurity. Some of these are well-recognised drivers of food insecurity known to affect other age groups (that is, low incomes, high living costs and various impacts associated with the pandemic). However, some appear more distinctively tied to the experiences of young people, who have less experience of managing budgets and food, and are more likely to be underemployed, to share living spaces and to be excluded from, or disadvantaged by, policy protections, all of which raise their risks of food insecurity. As the following section will highlight, coping with economic insecurity was more difficult for those participants without access to family support.

Management of food insecurity and experiences of support

The participants described a range of strategies for managing their food insecurity and avoiding hunger. They described relying on food that is cheap, filling, in damaged packaging or past its sell by date, for example, as well as skipping meals and reducing their portion sizes. Several accessed food opportunistically, eating at work if employed in hospitality, or benefiting from their friends’ or flatmates’ jobs in hospitality.

Many described actively working on their budgeting and cooking skills since their earlier experiences of food insecurity and credited their improvement at this for mitigating against subsequent episodes of food insecurity. However, many of these participants were still experiencing food insecurity, which is unsurprising given its roots in structural factors, like low income, rather than individual deficits like inexperience. The participants compensated for their lack of experience by drawing from a range of sophisticated skills and strategies to manage their limited resources and cope with food insecurity. For the participants in this study, these strategies were underpinned by notions of independence. In this sense, many participants had a tendency to locate responsibility for their food insecurity, and certainly for managing it, within themselves, which had implications for their perceptions and experiences of food support.

Informal support

Many of the participants managed their food insecurity, at least partially, within their social circle. They often ate at the homes of family members or friends when they ran out of money, and for some this had become a regular fixture; something that was simply built into their typical social routine and relationships:

My best friend is living in Shoreditch… so, when I feel hungry, I am going there to grab some meals… a few times a week. (Omar, 25, London)

The most common form of informal support identified was the gifting of food or money from relatives. Again, this was either something that occurred more sporadically, when money had run out, or had become more routinised, dependent on the nature of the participants’ food insecurity and on their relationships with their families. For example, Lucy, 26, relied on a monthly allowance from her father in order to afford food, whereas others got more periodic support, being taken food shopping or given money occasionally by parents.

While accessing food or money from relatives and friends emerged as the most common/popular strategy for managing food insecurity in other studies with young people (for example, Popkin et al, 2016; Connors et al, 2020), there was relatively low uptake of it in this study. There were typically two broad reasons for this. First, some participants’ parents had limited resources themselves, making participants reluctant to ask for their support. This form of support was also not available for some participants due to them being estranged from their families. This was particularly true for those with experience of homelessness, including three young people in the Edinburgh sample, who tended to have more strained familial relationships.

The second (very different) reason for low uptake of informal support in this study relates to participants typically having a strong sense of independence and pride, and feeling that asking for support was symbolic of a failure on their part as adults who should be able to manage on their own. This had stopped some from accepting support, even in times of acute need:

I’m completely aware that my family 100 per cent would have supported me and helped me… I just didn’t feel like I should. I feel like I was an adult, I’ve come into the world, I’ve moved up to Edinburgh, I’m doing this on my own, I can’t then now call my mum and ask her to send me some food… I feel like I wanted to prove myself a bit, so I didn’t ask and I didn’t let them know how bad my situation was. (Lewis, 23, Edinburgh)

While most of the participants were very reluctant to access or accept support from their families, for some this was a choice, while others had no choice as this resource was simply unavailable to them – which constitutes a qualitatively different experience around food insecurity and support.

Seeking support from friends or relatives was a similarly uncomfortable experience for most participants, who were committed to navigating their young lives independently. These findings suggest that young people’s strong sense of independence, and the conflation of notions of independence with adulthood in the Global North, may constitute a significant barrier to seeking or accepting support for food security among young people. However, food insecurity research conducted with older adults (for example, Purdam et al, 2019) has found that older adults, too, prefer to manage their food insecurity independently where possible, so this is a disposition not unique to young people. However, the way the young people articulated their sense of independence in their interviews suggested that this played a particularly strong role in their management of food insecurity, particularly in how they linked it explicitly to their age and to the notion, popular in policy, that young people need to ‘prove themselves’ as they enter adulthood.

Formal food support experiences

As has been found in other studies, there was very low uptake of formal food support from the participants in this study. This was almost always considered to be a last resort option, when all other tactics had been exhausted, and when in acute crisis. Most of the participants’ avoidance of food banks was due to the stigma attached to using them. As found in Connors et al’s (2020) study, accessing food banks felt more like accepting ‘charity’, which could be uncomfortable; a feeling that had to be negotiated alongside their desperate need for food.

Others had been traumatised by bad experiences when using food banks in the past, when they had felt particularly vulnerable due to their age and the desperateness of their situation:

They’re horrible. At least asking your family… it’s your family… but going to these food banks, you’re going in there with not the best characters. You can be young and vulnerable. It’s not a good place, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. (Kira, 21, Edinburgh)

As with their perspectives on informal food support, the participants’ discomfort with using food banks was linked to their strong sense of independence and agency, and the belief that they could and should manage their problems themselves. In the case of formal food support, however, this often manifested in the participants feeling undeserving of these services, which they felt should be prioritised for more ‘vulnerable’ groups. Accordingly, when participants had to use food banks, it was often underpinned with a sense of guilt and failure; a feeling of not having done enough on their own:

Honestly, I feel like, with every time I need it, I just felt like I hadn’t done enough. I’m quite a proud person and I have worked really hard to get where I am, from where I’ve come from… when you’ve got folks in their 40s, 50s, and they’re sitting there getting the same food as you. It’s like, no, surely to god, surely there’s something else that I can do so this can be left for other folks, other folks that need it more. (Leo, 22, Edinburgh)

As with informal support, this aversion to accepting charity or using food banks is not limited to young people, and has been widely reported for older age groups as well (see, for example, Garthwaite, 2016). However, as the quotes from Kira and Leo illustrate, this reluctance to engage with formal food support was explicitly linked to their age, in different ways, by the participants in this study.

Conclusion and discussion

This article makes an important contribution to knowledge around a demographic that has been troublingly overlooked in relation to food insecurity in the UK, despite their greater likelihood of experiencing it compared to older adults. Young people’s heightened risks of homelessness, poverty and destitution, known predictors of food insecurity, is well-established in research examining patterns of inequality (for example, Fitzpatrick et al, 2018), while more recent research has highlighted some of the ways in which young people’s food security has been compromised by the COVID-19 pandemic (for example, Connors et al, 2020). Despite this, young people’s underrepresentation among official food bank users has combined with, and actively contributed to, the ‘hidden’ nature of youth food insecurity in the UK, where the assumption that young people are sheltered from severe hardships by their families prevails (Kingman, 2019).

While the small-scale nature of this study inevitably places limitations on its ability to inform policy, by foregrounding the experiences of a more diverse range of young people, including those in employment, who are full-time students and who are in their 20s, this article has provided some important insights into experiences of youth food insecurity in the UK. It has identified a range of causes behind youth food insecurity, some of which are commonly recognised triggers of food insecurity, including low incomes, problems with welfare benefits and the various impacts of the pandemic. However, not only are young people more exposed to these triggers, this research has identified a range of additional factors driving or exacerbating food insecurity that are more distinctively tied to being young. These include leaving home for the first time, relational and environmental factors associated with shared living and a perceived lack of experience with budgeting and food.

The findings of this study have also highlighted that while the pandemic significantly worsened the participants’ food insecurity, most had been living in chronic or intermittent poverty for several years. This experience of persistent economic insecurity had forced them to become skilled and resourceful at ‘getting by’ (Lister, 2004), with participants drawing on a range of strategies to manage their hunger. Underpinning these strategies was a sense of independence; these were strategies they could deploy on their own terms that chimed with their tendency to frame their food insecurity as a personal responsibility that should be managed on their own, which carried significant implications for their perspectives on food support. While these sentiments of independence and personal responsibility are not unique to young people in relation to the highly stigmatised experience of food insecurity, the young people in this study often explicitly grounded these perspectives in relation to their youth and burgeoning adulthood, which suggests that these are potentially heightened barriers for this demographic with regard to food support.

Social support, which has been found to be a key resource in other studies of youth food insecurity (for example, Popkin et al, 2016), was problematic or missing for some of the participants in this study, which had necessitated their engagement with food banks. But consistent with the findings of other studies (Priestley, 2018; Sosenko et al, 2019), there was still relatively low uptake of formal support among the sample, who considered food banks to be an absolute last resort. This reluctance to engage with formal support was linked to the stigma attached to accepting ‘charity’, but was also strongly bound up in its incompatibility with the participants’ strong sense of emerging independence and personal responsibility, and was often entangled with their sense of being somehow undeserving of food aid; provision they felt should be reserved for more ‘deserving’ groups. These findings imply that there are a range of barriers to young people accessing both formal and informal food support, including the weight placed on establishing self-sufficiency and independence in young adulthood, and that young people’s relatively low usage of food banks should not be interpreted as denoting a lack of need for such support.

There has long been an assumption that young people are protected from experiencing severe hardships like food insecurity because they are able to rely on financial support from their families and can remain in or return to the family household if needed. As this and other studies have demonstrated, however, this assumption fails to acknowledge the diversity of youth experiences and how young people’s outcomes, support networks and resources are heavily shaped by social class, place and other key social divisions (Kingman, 2019). While information about the participants’ socioeconomic characteristics was not explicitly obtained in this study, the fact that the majority lived in either supported accommodation or social housing, combined with interviews testifying to chronic experiences of individual and familial economic hardship, strongly suggests that at least most of these participants were from backgrounds of low SES. Inequalities in young people’s access to familial support emerged particularly starkly in this study, where some participants had no access to this resource, which served as a protective factor against food insecurity for a minority of other participants. While most of the participants were against seeking or accepting familial support for reasons of pride or because of their parents’ own straitened circumstances, some were simply unable to make this choice, due to being estranged from their families, often since their early teenage years. Interestingly, however, while these are clearly qualitatively different experiences, almost all of the young people described their reluctant attitudes to informal – and formal – support in similar ways that circled back to their sense of independence and personal responsibility.

Little differences in experiences emerged between the two case cities, however, apart from those related to the significant differences in the two samples, with those living in supported accommodation in London describing distinctive challenges within these environments for food security, for example. Rather, the pervasiveness of food insecurity among young people from a range of circumstances emerged between the two cities, which have high living costs and youth labour markets skewed towards precarious, low-paid employment.

The findings presented in this article should not be surprising for three key reasons. First, evidence has consistently indicated that young people are at a disproportionately higher risk of experiencing poverty, destitution and homelessness than other age groups in the UK. Second, labour market approaches to young people in the UK are a key part of the problem, with young people paid lower wages than older adults and overrepresented in casual jobs with low levels of security. Third, young people are entitled to fewer and lower rates of social security protections than older adults in the UK. The demographic risks of experiencing things like food insecurity and poverty are vividly exposed during recessions and the numerous structural factors that disadvantage young people have been brought to the surface during the COVID-19 pandemic. If meaningful steps towards these actions are not taken, we can expect to see rates of youth food insecurity and poverty among young people rise further in the UK, particularly under COVID-19 and the current cost of living crisis.

There are actions that can be taken at the local level by practitioners that can help to mitigate youth food insecurity and its effects, including improving the accessibility and visibility of formal food support, but without a national government-led response, these will only address the symptoms of youth food insecurity, rather than its fundamental causes. There is a critical need for meaningful policy debate about introducing a living wage for young people, in acknowledgment of the diversity of young people’s circumstances, to better protect them from poverty and to enable them to build capacity for financial resilience, for example. It is equally important that current Universal Credit and Local Housing Allowance rates for under-25s be revised and that serious thought is given to regulating casual employment practices for young employees. These inequalities are part of a broader policy frame that homogenises the youth cohort by making blanket assumptions about their financial outgoings and access to family support and resources. While there is some rigour to this rationale because the majority of young people do live with, or are able to access support from, their families, at least a third of young people do not and instead live independently, facing many of the same financial responsibilities as older adults (Social Security Advisory Committee, 2018). Finally, the government and third sector organisations might consider a cash first approach to supporting young people with food insecurity, which carries significant stigma in relation to accessing food aid. The advantages of a cash first approach to food aid have been argued by a range of organisations (IFAN, 2022), and seem particularly appropriate for a demographic that is particularly underrepresented among official food bank users.

Funding

This work was supported by the Oak Foundation under Grant OCAY-16–607.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr Beth Watts and Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick for their considered mentorship of this research project. Grateful thanks also go to Professor Sharon Gewirtz for her valuable feedback on this article.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

References

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    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
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    • Search Google Scholar
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    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
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    • Search Google Scholar
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    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
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    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Watts, B., Johnsen, S. and Sosenko, F. (2015) Youth Homelessness in the UK: A Review for the OVO Foundation, Edinburgh: Heriot Watt University.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Waxman, E., Popkin, E.J. and Galvez, M. (2016) Bringing Teens to the Table: A Focus on Food Security in America, Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
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    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Arnett, J.J. (2000) Emerging adulthood: a theory of development from the late teens through the twenties, American Psychologist, 55(5): 46980. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.55.5.469

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Bailey, N. (2016) Exclusionary employment in Britain’s broken labour market, Critical Social Policy, 36(1): 82103. doi: 10.1177/0261018315601800

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Bramley, G., Treanor, M., Sosenko, F. and Littlewood, M. (2021) State of Hunger: Building the Evidence on Poverty, Destitution and Food Insecurity in the UK, London: Trussell Trust.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2): 77101. doi: 10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Cairns, K. (2018) Relational foodwork: young people and food insecurity, Children & Society, 32(3): 17484.

  • Cardoso, S.G., Truninger, M., Ramos, V. and Augusto, F.R. (2019) School meals and food poverty: children’s views, parents’ perspectives and the role of school, Children & Society, 33(6): 57286.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Connors, C., Malan, L., Canavan, S., Sissoko, F., Carmo, M., Sheppard, C. and Cook, F. (2020) The Lived Experience of Food Insecurity Under Covid-19, London: Food Standards Agency and Bright Harbour.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Cooper, N. and Dumpleton, S. (2013) Walking the Breadline: The Scandal of Food Poverty in 21st Century Britain, Salford: Church Action on Poverty and Oxfam.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • de Vries, R., Reeves, A. and Baumberger, B.G. (2017) Inequalities in Application of Welfare Sanctions in Britain, London: LSE International Inequalities Institute.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Dush, J.L. (2020) Adolescent food insecurity: a review of contextual and behavioural factors, Public Health Nursing, 37(3): 32738. doi: 10.1111/phn.12708

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) (2020) Thriving UK jobs market hits record high employment rate, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thriving-uk-jobs-market-hits-record-high-employment-rate.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Eisenstadt, N. (2017) Shifting the Curve: A Report to the First Minister, Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

  • Fitzpatrick, S., Bramley, G., Sosenko, F. and Blenkinsopp, J. (2018) Destitution in the UK 2018: Final Report, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Garthwaite, K. (2016) Stigma, shame and ‘People Like Us’: an ethnographic study of foodbank use in the UK, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 24(3): 27789. doi: 10.1332/175982716X14721954314922

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Goulden, C. (2018) Young people living independently need social security too, https://ssac.blog.gov.uk/2018/01/10/young-people-living-independently-need-social-security-too/.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Homeless Link (2021) Young and Homeless 2021, London: Homeless Link.

  • House of Commons Library (2020) Youth Unemployment Statistics, London: House of Commons.

  • House of Lords (2020) Covid-19: Impact on People Living in Poverty, London: House of Lords.

  • IFAN (Independent Food Aid Network) (2022) IFAN and cash first approach to food insecurity, https://www.foodaidnetwork.org.uk/cash-first.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • ILO (International Labour Organisation) (2020) Youth and Covid-19: Impact on Jobs, Education, Rights and Mental Wellbeing, Geneva: International Labour Organisation.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Immervoll, H. and Knotz, C. (2018) How demanding are activation requirements for jobseekers?, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers No.215, Paris: OECD.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Innes, D. (2020) What Has Driven the Rise of In-work Poverty?, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

  • Institute for Social and Economic Research (2020) Understanding society: Covid-19, https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/topic/covid-19.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Johnson, K., Drew, C. and Auerswald, C. (2020) Structural violence and food insecurity in the lives of formerly homeless young adults living in permanent supportive housing, Journal of Youth Studies, 23(10): 124972. doi: 10.1080/13676261.2019.1667492

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Joyce, R. and Xu, X. (2020) Shutdown Sectors During the Coronavirus crisis: Which Workers are Most Exposed?, London: Institute for Fiscal Studies.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Kalleberg, A. (2018) Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Wellbeing in Rich Democracies, Cambridge: Polity.

  • Kingman, D. (2019) All Consuming Pressure: The Cost-of-living Crisis Facing Younger Generations, London: Intergenerational Foundation.

  • Lister, R. (2004) Poverty, Cambridge: Polity.

  • Loopstra, R., Fledderjohann, J., Reeves, A. and Stuckler, D. (2018) Impact of welfare benefit sanctioning on food insecurity: a dynamic Cross-area study of food bank usage in the UK, Journal of Social Policy, 47(3): 43757. doi: 10.1017/S0047279417000915

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • MacDonald, R. (2009) Precarious work: risk, choice and poverty traps, in A. Furlong (ed) Handbook of Youth and Young Adulthood: New Perspectives and Agendas, London: Routledge, pp 16776.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • MacLeod, M.A. (2019) Found Wanting? Understanding Journeys Into and Out of Food Insecurity: A Longitudinal Study, Scotland: Menu for Change.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Major, L.E. and Machin, S. (2020) Covid-19 and social mobility: A CEP Covid-19 Analysis, Paper no.004, London: London School of Economics and Political Science.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • McBride, J., Smith, A. and Mbala, M. (2018) ‘You end up with nothing’: the experience of being a statistic of ‘in-work poverty’ in the UK, Work, Employment and Society, 32(1): 21018. doi: 10.1177/0950017017728614

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • NOMIS (2022a) Labour market profile – City of Edinburgh, https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/la/1946157416/report.aspx.

  • NOMIS (2022b) Labour market profile – London, https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/gor/2013265927/report.aspx.

  • Parkes, H. and McNeil, C. (2020) Estimating Poverty Impacts of Coronavirus: Microsimulation Estimates, London: Institute for Public Policy Research.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Popkin, S.J., Scott, M.M. and Galvez, M. (2016) Impossible Choices: Teens and Food Insecurity in America, Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Priestley, E. (2018) Food Experiences of Young Homeless People Living in Supported Accommodation: An Exploratory Pilot Study, London: King’s College London.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Purdam, K., Esmail, A. and Garratt, E. (2019) Food insecurity among older people in the UK, British Food Journal, 121(3): 65874. doi: 10.1108/BFJ-05-2018-0301

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Reeves, A. and Loopstra, R. (2021) The continuing effects of welfare reform on food bank use in the UK: the Roll-out of Universal Credit, Journal of Social Policy, 50(4): 788808. doi: 10.1017/S0047279420000513

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Schoon, I. and Bynner, J. (2017) Young People’s Development and the Great Recession: Uncertain Transitions and Precarious Futures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Social Security Advisory Committee (2018) Young people living independently, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/709732/ssac-occasional-paper-20-young-people-living-independently.pdf.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Sosenko, F., Littlewood, M., Bramley, G., Fitzpatrick, S., Blenkinsopp, J. and Wood, J. (2019) State of Hunger: A Study of Poverty and Food Insecurity in the UK, London: Trussell Trust.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Trussell Trust (2019) Five Weeks too Long: Why we Need to end the Wait for Universal Credit, London: Trussell Trust.

  • Trussell Trust (2020) Lockdown, Lifelines and the Long Haul Ahead: The Impact of Covid-19 on Food Banks in the Trussell Trust Network, London: Trussell Trust.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Watts, B. and Fitzpatrick, S. (2014) Young people hit hardest by benefit sanctions, https://i-sphere.site.hw.ac.uk/2014/09/11/young-adults-hit-hardest-by-benefit-sanctions/.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Watts, B., Johnsen, S. and Sosenko, F. (2015) Youth Homelessness in the UK: A Review for the OVO Foundation, Edinburgh: Heriot Watt University.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Waxman, E., Popkin, E.J. and Galvez, M. (2016) Bringing Teens to the Table: A Focus on Food Security in America, Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Whitham, G. and Acik, N. (2019) Data Analysis of the Youth and Play Needs of Children and Young People in Manchester, Manchester: Greater Manchester Poverty Action.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
Charlotte McPhersonKing’s College London, UK

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