Going hungry A member of staff at a food bank in Coventry in January 2023, and (above right) a contemporary depiction of starving people in the Irish famine in the 1840s
GETTY IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN/TOPFOTO
Life
seems less affordable with each passing month. Over the past two years, energy prices in the UK have risen faster than at any time since 1973. The last time food seemed this expensive was in 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis. With the cost of everyday items having risen faster than wages for the past couple of years, families are facing the largest two-year fall in living standards since records began. One in 14 households in the UK have used emergency food aid in the past year and, globally, 51 million people have been plunged into extreme poverty as a result of the rising cost of living.