Hunger in a Nordic Welfare State: Finland

Abstract

During the 1970s and 1980s people in Finland became used to the idea that the welfare state would satisfy the basic needs of all citizens. Under these circumstances, hunger or food insecurity as a social evil was unthinkable. The deep economic recession at the beginning of the 1990s, however, revealed holes in the social security safety net that affected the most vulnerable. News of the ‘hunger problem’ was initially made public by activists working in different relief organizations (Hänninen and Karjalainen, 1994, p. 274). Finally, in 1993, a survey published by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (MSAH) estimated that approximately 100,000 Finnish people wanted for food — in other words were food insecure — at some point during the period 1992–1993 (Kontula and Koskela, 1993). It was at this time that charitable food aid emerged, and has since become a fixed feature of the poverty policy landscape.