The role of social innovation in tackling global poverty and vulnerability.

Tackling the rapid rise in global poverty is one of the most pressing challenges the world faces today, especially in this new age of turbulence. On top of the ongoing environmental crisis, the last fifteen years has been rocked by the financial crisis of 2007-8, compounded by the 2020 Covid-pandemic and then by the 2022 war in Ukraine, each of which has negatively impacted all aspects of sustainable development. Although in practice many development organizations have been using the methods and processes of social innovation to tackle poverty and vulnerability for many years, it is only recently that they have specifically begun to analyse and codify its contribution to these and other SDGs. Social innovation provides beneficial social outcomes for citizens and other actors, often at local level with the strong bottom-up involvement of civil society and through its cross-actor, cross-sector, cross-disciplinary and cross-cutting strengths. Importantly, it aims to empower those with a social need, particularly when they have little to begin with. It focuses on increasing the beneficiaries' own agency and capability rather than passively only relying on others to act on their behalf. This is done by transforming social relationships and developing new collaborative processes. Amongst a wide range of recent and contemporary sources, this paper analyses a large scale quantitative and qualitative global survey of social innovations that tackle poverty and vulnerability in different global regions. It examines various definitions of poverty, including extreme, absolute and relative measures as well as arguably more useful approaches like the Multidimensional Poverty Index. It proposes how social innovation should be recalibrated to meet the increasing threats of the new age of turbulence, including by deploying the sociological lens of the agency-structure dichotomy to show why the public sector needs to become involved more proactively in social innovation. It also looks at certain myths around poverty and vulnerability, examines why we need to revise our understanding of sustainable development and resilience, and why a new nexus approach is needed that combines SDG1 with other strongly related SDGs.

European household spending and socio-economic impacts on food behavior during the first wave of COVID-19

This paper provides a European-level analysis using a large-scale survey of 13 countries to examine the power of relevant economic and socio-demographic characteristics to account for changes in food consumption and purchasing behavior during COVID-19. This was done by focusing on a two-level analysis of subject-related predictors highlighted in many existing country-level studies to test the generality of their significance. The Level 1 predictors relate to the individual households participating in the survey consisting of household composition, education, and location, as well as three types of perceived COVID-19 risks of infection, severity, and anxiety. Level 2 relates to the national level, and especially to the financial situation measured by the mean national Actual Individual Consumption (AIC) per capita in PPP, of the countries, in which the households reside. In terms of changes in food consumption, results show that household composition, education, and the household’s perceived risk of both being infected by COVID-19 and being severely infected are significant predictors, although there are some differences between the two levels. Some possible explanations are as follows: putting food into one’s body in the context of the pandemic is related to a household’s financial situation, its composition, especially the presence or absence of children and older people, and its educational attainment, and through all these aforementioned to the perception of COVID-19 infection and its severity risks. Changes in food purchasing react significantly to the same predictors, but additionally, to all other predictors at both household and AIC levels. The household’s location and perceived COVID-19 anxiety risks are thus also significant. Food purchasing depends much more on factors operating both at the individual household level and the AIC level together;for example, households’ access to food is affected by both national and local lockdown restrictions that vary according to the location of the household.

Changes in Food Consumption During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis of Consumer Survey Data From the First Lockdown Period in Denmark, Germany, and Slovenia.

This paper focuses on changes in food consumption that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its objective is to map changes at individual consumer level and identify the influence of different factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic on changes in individual food consumption. We conducted a cross-sectional online survey among 2,680 residents of Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), and Slovenia (SI) using quota sampling for gender, age and regional distribution. Data on consumption frequencies before and during the pandemic were collected with a food frequency questionnaire in the spring of 2020 (during the first lockdown period) for important types of fresh food and non-perishable food. Our results showed that, depending on the type of food, 15-42% of study participants changed their consumption frequency during the pandemic, compared to before. In all the study countries, the food categories with the highest rates of change were frozen food, canned food, and cake and biscuits; among the food categories with lower rates of change were bread, alcoholic drinks, and dairy products. People across all three countries shopped less frequently during lockdown and there was an overall reduction in the consumption of fresh foods, but an increase in the consumption of food with a longer shelf life in Denmark and Germany. Interestingly though, we observed diverging trends in all food categories analyzed, with some people decreasing and others increasing their consumption frequencies, demonstrating that the pandemic had different impacts on people's lifestyles and food consumption patterns. Using the method of multinomial regression analysis, we identified factors significantly (p < 0.01, p < 0.05, p < 0.1) related to increases and decrease in individuals' consumption frequencies in different food categories. The factors include restrictions put in place in response to the pandemic (i.e., closure of physical workplaces, canteens, cafés and restaurants, schools, and childcare institutions), changes in households' grocery shopping frequency, individuals' perceived risk of COVID-19, income losses due to the pandemic, and socio-demographic factors. Interesting differences between the countries were detected, allowing insights into the different food cultures. Conclusions include implications for policy-makers and actors in the food supply chain on the issues of healthy diets, food system resilience, and behavior change.