A new study using Poland’s national household budget data has produced a striking estimate of how many people may be living close to the edge of food poverty: 42.4% of the population were classified as being at risk in 2023 when their food spending was compared with a basic subsistence food threshold. The figure is not a measure of hunger, malnutrition, or people’s reported experiences of food insecurity. Instead, it captures a narrower but economically revealing problem: whether households spend enough on food and non-alcoholic beverages to reach a nationally defined minimum food standard. The analysis, published in Social Indicators Research, argues that household composition—especially the presence and number of children—can dramatically reshape the risk.
The study by Hanna Dudek of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences addresses a problem that has long complicated poverty statistics: how should researchers compare households of different sizes? A family of five cannot be assessed fairly using the same raw expenditure figure as a single adult, because more people require more resources. Poverty researchers therefore use an equivalence scale, a mathematical adjustment that converts household income or spending into a comparable figure. The scale attempts to account for differences in household needs and for economies of scale, such as the fact that several people can share housing, appliances, heating, storage, and other costs. Dudek’s analysis asks whether food should be adjusted in the same way as total household resources—and whether Poland’s official subsistence baskets can answer that question.
The reference point was Poland’s minimum subsistence level, or “minimum existence” threshold, calculated by the Institute of Labour and Social Affairs, known as IPiSS. This is an absolute, needs-based standard designed to represent the most basic level of consumption required to sustain life and basic psychophysical development. It includes essential categories such as food, clothing, hygiene, housing, and selected educational needs, but excludes many goods and services associated with social participation or a comfortable standard of living. Dudek isolated the food component of these baskets and used it as a food-poverty threshold. For a one-person employee household in 2023, the monthly food threshold was 377.93 Polish zloty, approximately €83.20 at the conversion used in the article.
The technical result at the heart of the research concerns the scale elasticity implied by the food basket. Dudek represented the cost of a household’s minimum food needs with a power function, S = Nᵉ, where N is the number of household members and e is the elasticity parameter. When e equals zero, household size has no effect on the scale; when e equals one, needs rise proportionally with every additional person. In the latter case, there are no economies of scale, and household food spending is simply divided by the number of people. Using the IPiSS food values for different household types, the estimated elasticity was approximately one. Under this specific normative framework, equivalised food expenditure therefore became per-capita food expenditure.
That finding supports a practice already common in food-poverty research, but it comes with an important qualification. The result does not prove that large households never save money through bulk purchasing, shared cooking, or lower preparation costs per person. Nor does it establish that every family member has identical nutritional requirements. Children, adults, and older people have different energy and dietary needs, while household members may not consume food equally. Rather, the estimate shows that the official minimum food baskets used in Poland increase roughly in proportion to household size. The scale is therefore a property of the basket’s design and assumptions, not a definitive measurement of how families actually shop, prepare meals, or distribute food.
To test the consequences of this framework, Dudek analysed microdata from the 2023 Polish Household Budget Survey, a nationally representative survey covering 28,089 private households. The survey combines household expenditure diaries with computer-assisted interviews and records spending on food, beverages, income, and demographic characteristics. The researcher applied Statistics Poland’s calibrated household weights, which align the sample with the country’s population structure by age and gender using information from the 2021 National Census. The analysis grouped households into six broad categories: one-person households, childless couples, couples with one or two children, couples with three or more children, lone-parent households, and other household types.
Across the full sample, average monthly per-capita food expenditure was 505 zloty, while the median was lower, at 464 zloty. This gap indicates a moderately right-skewed distribution: most households clustered below the mean, while a smaller group with relatively high food spending pulled the average upward. The standard deviation was 235 zloty, revealing substantial variation in food expenditure. The differences between household groups were even sharper. One-person households and childless couples recorded the highest spending levels and broader distributions. Families with children spent considerably less per person, with couples raising three or more children showing the lowest mean and median values. Lone-parent households also displayed relatively constrained spending.
The study’s principal indicator, the At-Risk-of-Food-Poverty Rate, classified individuals as at risk when their equivalised food expenditure fell below the 377.93-zloty threshold. At the individual level, 42.4% of people were below the line. At the household level, the corresponding figure was 32.4%. The difference is statistically and socially important: households below the threshold were larger on average, containing 3.74 people compared with 2.43 among households above it. Counting households alone therefore understates the number of individuals affected, because a single low-spending family can include several people.
The risk was not evenly distributed. Only 11.1% of people living in one-person households and 19.0% of those in childless couples fell below the threshold. Among couples with one or two children, however, the rate rose to 45.3%. For couples with three or more children, it reached 68.7%, the highest recorded level. Lone-parent households faced a rate of 55.7%, while the broad category of other household types stood at 47.0%. The study suggests that the number of children and the availability of more than one adult income source can be decisive factors in determining whether minimum food spending is achievable.
Dudek also measured the depth of the risk using a food-poverty gap index. Rather than simply counting households below the line, this measure calculates their average proportional shortfall: how far spending falls below the threshold among those already identified as at risk. Across Poland, the average gap was 25.4%. The largest shortfall appeared among couples with three or more children, at 29.4%, while childless couples had the smallest gap, at 22.0%. Lone-parent households recorded 25.8%, and one-person households 25.5%. The relatively modest variation suggests that household composition has a stronger effect on the probability of falling below the threshold than on the size of the shortfall once a household is already below it.
The results do not mean that 42.4% of Poland’s population experienced hunger or lacked a nutritionally adequate diet. Food expenditure is an economic proxy, and spending can be influenced by preferences, prices, shopping locations, home production, food donations, purchasing strategies, and reporting behaviour. A household may spend little without being nutritionally deprived, while a high-spending household may still consume an unhealthy or inadequate diet. The measure also excludes subjective experiences, such as anxiety about running out of food, skipping meals, or being unable to afford preferred foods—dimensions captured by instruments such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Insecurity Experience Scale.
Even with those limits, the study offers a potentially powerful way to identify groups under financial pressure using detailed expenditure data. Its needs-based threshold is transparent, rooted in an established Polish institutional framework, and easier to interpret than a purely statistical cutoff such as a percentage of median spending. The findings point toward targeted monitoring and policy support for large families and lone parents, whose food budgets appear especially vulnerable to inflation and rising living costs. The research also illustrates why poverty statistics can change substantially depending on whether analysts count households or people, use income or expenditure, and apply a per-capita or more complex equivalence scale. In Poland, the official food basket points toward a simple conclusion with far-reaching implications: the risk of food poverty is driven less by household size alone than by who makes up the household—and children can make the difference between being above or below the minimum.
Subject of Research: Risk of food poverty in Poland measured through household food expenditure, needs-based food thresholds, and equivalence scales.
Article Title: Measuring the Risk of Food Poverty: Evidence from Needs-Based Food Thresholds and Household Budget Data in Poland
Article References: Dudek, H. (2026). “Measuring the Risk of Food Poverty: Evidence from Needs-Based Food Thresholds and Household Budget Data in Poland.” Social Indicators Research, 183, Article 41.
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-026-03886-w
Keywords: risk of food poverty, household food expenditure, food poverty threshold, equivalence scale, minimum subsistence basket, Poland, large families, lone-parent households, household budget survey, poverty gap index
