Income inequality and food security in the light of the experience of the OECD countries

Abstract

The main aim of this article is evaluate the relationships between income inequality and food security in the light of the experiences of the OECD countries. Understanding the problems of inequality of income and food security is one of the main challenge for economic and social development of the contemporary world. In the part of empirical studies one has used a data from the selected OECD countries by prism of the Gini coefficient of income distribution and relative poverty. In turn, food security is presented from the perspective of the global index of food security (Global Food Security Index), which was developed at the request of DuPont by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). In the case of empirical verification one has used regression analysis and cluster (agglomeration) for typing of the studied countries. Time scope of analysis refers to the period 2010–2015. It was stated that there is a considerable variation in the level of food security, and especially income inequality between countries. This is a consequence of both the differences in the level of economic development, as well as the model of functioning of the economy. A relationships between income inequality and food security are complex and ambiguous. A clearer regularities can be seen in the case of income inequality and food security in the dimension related to the economic affordability of food price. This is due to the fact that issues related to food security are mainly connected with low level of income. In turn, the cluster analysis made it possible to distinguish three groups of countries with different characteristics in terms of income inequality and food security.