Can FAO's measure of chronic undernourishment be strengthened?

In its Sixth World Food Survey released at the 1996 World Food Summit, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported that 841 million people in developing countries are chronically undernourished. This number and its country and regional-level disaggregations have proved tremendously useful to countless development aid agencies and researchers. In the context of a recent wave of new nationally-representative household food consumption and expenditure surveys, this paper examines the estimation methodology underlying the food insecurity measure, which relies on national aggregate measures of food availability and distribution. The paper finds that the measure largely reflects national food availabilities and does not adequately capture people's ability to gain access to food – the ultimate key to food security. The implications for the indicator's use by policy makers in geographical targeting and tracking changes in food insecurity over time are drawn out. The paper concludes by arguing that the time has come to review the potential for employing the new household survey data, along with new methods, to strengthen the empirical foundations of FAO's measure.