Do Food insecurity and Public social spending go together across countries?

Across 41 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.56, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.41.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 2015-2023, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is +0.000 (40 countries, 345 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is -0.010.

Does Food insecurity cause Public social spending?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Food insecurity vs. Public social spending

Fades after adjusting for income

Across 41 countries, Food insecurity and Public social spending rise and fall together at r = -0.56 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.37, which could easily be chance (q = 0.082, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things.

Comparing countries across the middle half of public social spending, 17.1% to 24.6% of GDP, food insecurity is better by 5.43% of population at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 2.66% of population.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.562p = 0.000 · 41 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.371p = 0.019 · likely range [-0.61, -0.07]

p, allowing for regions0.012standard error 0.084 · 5 regions

Check for luck (q)0.082across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Food insecurity · % of populationlink with income -0.83 · proxy

Public social spending · % of GDPlink with income +0.44 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.562	0.000	41
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.409	0.008	41
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.371	0.019	41
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.237	0.142	41

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 41 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.192 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.443 (without FIN) to -0.305 (without PER). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: FIN (-0.072).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
Europe & Central Asia	29	-0.19

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	14	-0.31
Middle third	13	+0.22
Richest third	14	-0.47

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	35	-0.44

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.298 after dropping 2 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 9years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.000, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose food insecurity moved did not tend to see their public social spending move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)-0.371for comparison

Within countries+0.035each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.000q = 0.998 · 40 countries

Year-on-year changes-0.010q = 0.925

Read with care.

Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

345 country-years (one country in one year), 40 countries, 2015–2023, about 9 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 7% for Food insecurity, 7% for Public social spending. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

Same year (lag 0): +0.000. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The largest value on this curve (+0.22 at lag -5) is higher than the same-year one by 0.22. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 14 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.

The data

	% of population	% of GDP	Years
Peru PER	41%	7.55%	2023
Colombia COL	27.8%	14.1%	2023
Mexico MEX	19.3%	10%	2023
Chile CHL	19.2%	12.9%	2023
Romania ROU	18.6%	17.6%	2023, 2021
New Zealand NZL	17.3%	24.6%	2023, 2022
Hungary HUN	15.6%	18%	2023, 2024
Costa Rica CRI	15.4%	12.6%	2023, 2022
Australia AUS	13.8%	17.1%	2023, 2022
Finland FIN	13.4%	31.4%	2023, 2024
Portugal PRT	11.9%	24.1%	2023, 2024
Bulgaria BGR	11.6%	20.5%	2023, 2021
Latvia LVA	11.2%	19.7%	2023
Estonia EST	10.8%	17.2%	2023
United States USA	10.3%	19.8%	2023, 2024

World Bank, World Development Indicators
OECD databases as named on each indicator: PISA, Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), Income Distribution Database, Development Assistance Committee statistics, Family Database, Government at a Glance, Corporate Tax Statistics, employment and environment statistics

Sources

Food insecurity

Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population (%)

Food and Agriculture Organization, Food Insecurity Experience Scale · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

Asked of people, in a survey about running out of food, and reported as a three-year average from 2015. It is the one measure of hunger here that comes from what people say they went through, rather than from a model.

Public social spending

Public social expenditure

OECD · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 (OECD terms and conditions) · updated annual, except the snapshots noted per indicator · comparable from 1980 only

All public social spending, as a share of GDP: pensions, health, family, unemployment, housing and the rest. The figures before 1980 are stitched together from older OECD tables and from Lindert's historical estimates, so they are left out. The OECD's social spending database (SOCX) itself starts in 1980. The four spending areas below are parts of this total and are flagged as such.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2021–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 5 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Food insecurity and Public social spending

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Food insecurity changes Public social spending, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.