Following the recommendation of experts gathered in the Committe on World Food Security (CFS) Round Table on hunger measurement, hosted at FAO headequarters in September 2011, an initial set of indicators aiming to capture various aspects of food insecurity is presented here.

The choice of indicators has been mostly informed by data availability with sufficient coverage to enable meaningful comparisons across regions and over the years. While most of these indicators are already being produced and published by the FAO and other international organizations, this database introduces a number of new indicators to fill some of the recognized gaps in food security information systems, most notably in the ability to capture the socio-economic dimensions of food insecurity.

To facilitate interpretation of the proposed indicators, they are classified in three groups:

The first group collects indicators that describe determinants of food insecurity, that is structural conditions likely to worsen food insecurity in the absence of adequate policy interventions, including emergency assistance.

The second group includes indicators aimed at capturing outcomesof food insecurity as can be recorded through inadequate food consumption or anthopometric failures.

The third group collects indicators providing information on the vulnerability to food insecurity, as can be gauged from observing past variability of outcomes and conditions conducive to vulnerability to shocks.

Within the first two groups, the indicators are further classified based on the dimension of food insecurity on which they provide information, namely availability, physical access, economic access (or affordability), and utilization.

Download data  (Last Updated: January 24, 2013)