Food-Price Inflation and Household Food Consumption in the EU-27: Economic Vulnerability in European Food Systems

Rising food prices have placed renewed pressure on household budgets across Europe, while also creating challenges for agri-food markets through changes in consumer demand and purchasing behavior. This study examines the relationship between relative food-price inflation and real per-capita household food consumption expenditure across the EU-27 over 2010–2024. Relative food-price inflation is defined as annual food HICP inflation net of core inflation, distinguishing food-specific price pressures from broader inflationary developments. Using an annual country-level panel, two-way fixed-effects regressions are estimated with country-clustered standard errors. The analysis further tests whether this relationship varies with real disposable income, material deprivation, and the poverty-reducing impact of social transfers. Across the baseline model, heterogeneity specifications, and robustness checks, no statistically significant systematic association is identified between relative food-price inflation and real food consumption expenditure. The income interaction has the theoretically expected positive sign but remains statistically insignificant, while interactions with material deprivation and social transfers are also unsupported. By contrast, unemployment is negatively and more consistently associated with real food consumption expenditure. These statistically insignificant estimates should not be interpreted as evidence of a zero association, as modest effects in either direction remain compatible with the data. Households may also adjust through changes in product choice, expenditure composition, and substitution within the food basket, although these mechanisms cannot be directly identified in the present analysis. The study contributes EU-wide evidence on the relationship between food-specific price pressures and aggregate household food expenditure, while highlighting the need for disaggregated data to examine individual purchasing responses.