Science1 publisher3 min readPublished
Fuel, food and financial insecurity overlap for more than 1 in 10 Scottish adults
Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found more than 1 in 10 of 4,203 Scottish adults surveyed in 2023 faced fuel, food and financial insecurity at once. That overlap is nearly triple what chance would produce, though the study's link to poor health comes from associations in one self-reported survey.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- Fuel insecurity, meaning an inadequately heated home or arrears on energy bills, was the most common hardship, reported by 58% of respondents.
- Food insecurity, meaning skipped meals, smaller portions or food bank use because of cost or availability, affected 28% of respondents.
- Lower-income adults aged 35 to 74 were at particular risk of fuel insecurity.
- Older adults were more likely to have incomes below minimum income thresholds but less likely to report financial insecurity, a pattern the authors say may mask need.
- Lead researcher Aravinda Guntupalli estimates that around half a million older adults in Scotland may be experiencing fuel insecurity.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision Scotland's anti-poverty strategy has to choose between schemes aimed at one hardship each and support for households carrying several at once; the authors argue for the second.
- constraint Screening for help on income alone or on self-reported hardship alone will miss people, since in this sample each measure caught need the other did not.
- contradiction Targeting support by measured health harm would favour younger and middle-aged adults, while income thresholds point more often at older ones.
- constraint With the health links resting on associations from one year of self-reported data, the public-health cost of cold homes in Scotland remains unquantified.
If fuel, food and financial insecurity hit households independently, the share of adults with all three would be the three rates multiplied together: 0.58 times 0.28 times 0.22, or about 3.6% [1]. The survey found more than 10% [2], nearly three times that baseline [2]. A second check gives the same answer. Financial insecurity, meaning being unable to pay bills, manage unexpected costs or avoid problem debt, was reported by 22% of respondents [7]. Because it was the least common of the three, it sets a ceiling on the triple overlap. More than 45% of the financially insecure must therefore also have reported fuel and food insecurity [3].
The study was published in the European Journal of Public Health by researchers at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Stellenbosch [1]. It used Joseph Rowntree Foundation survey data, collected by Savanta ComRes from 4,203 adults in Scotland in 2023 [3]. That puts the group carrying all three hardships at more than 420 people [4]. The insecurity measures are what respondents said about their own lives [6][7].
Self-report complicates the study's central argument. The authors say income-based measures of poverty fail to capture the full extent of hardship in Scottish households [13]. For older adults the problem ran the other way: income thresholds caught need that people's own answers about money did not [8]. Aravinda Guntupalli, who led the research [18], said the pattern carried into health: "Paradoxically, the negative health impacts of insecurities were more pronounced among younger and middle-aged adults than older adults, echoing older adults' tendency to underreport financial strain" [9].
The public-health case is less secure than the overlap. The authors argue the cost-of-living crisis should be treated as a significant public-health issue [14]. Guntupalli said Scotland "already faces the lowest life expectancy in the U.K. and the highest life expectancy inequality in Western Europe" [12] and that "fuel insecurity is likely to carry substantial public health costs" [11]. The paper's title calls its findings associations [15], and they come from a single survey year [3]. The phys.org report does not describe how health was measured or which factors the analysis adjusted for. An association between hardship and poor health can run in either direction. Illness can cut a household's income as readily as a cold home can make someone ill.
I think the clustering is the firm result, and it supports the team's policy case without help from the health claim. The researchers want Scotland's anti-poverty strategy to recognise how these insecurities intersect, so that support reaches those most at risk [16]. "Tackling one insecurity at a time simply isn't enough," co-author Sarah Champagne said [17].
What to watch
- Follow-up surveys of the same Scottish adults over several years could show whether hardship comes before worse health or follows it.
- The full paper's account of how health was measured and what the models controlled for would show how strong the insecurity-health links are.
- Whether Scotland's anti-poverty strategy adds fuel, food and financial insecurity measures to its income thresholds.