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Measuring Chronic Hunger from Diet Snapshots: Why 'Bottom up' Survey Counts and 'Top down' FAO Estimates Will Never Meet

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Abstract

Widely used global hunger estimates from the FAO are ‘top down’ in that they combine data on each country’s total food balance with variance estimates from household surveys. Food balance sheets are only annual so the FAO just estimate the prevalence of chronic hunger. These estimates are criticized and recent research advocates ‘bottom up’ counts of hunger directly from household consumption surveys. These surveys give a snapshot of living standards, for the week, fortnight or month reference period, so only noisy measures of annual dietary energy can be derived from them. This overstated between-households variance raises the share of the population who appear below nutritional standards, for any standard set below the median, and so overstates chronic hunger. In this paper, a new method of deriving chronic hunger estimates from snapshot surveys is proposed, which also lets the transient component of hunger be identified. This method is demonstrated using a household survey from Myanmar that has repeated observations on households during the year. The transient component of hunger is almost one-half of the total and uncorrected snapshot surveys would overstate the chronic hunger rate by almost 90 percent.

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  • John Gibson, 2016. "Measuring Chronic Hunger from Diet Snapshots: Why 'Bottom up' Survey Counts and 'Top down' FAO Estimates Will Never Meet," Working Papers in Economics 16/07, University of Waikato.
    • Handle: RePEc:wai:econwp:16/07
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    1. Beegle, Kathleen & De Weerdt, Joachim & Friedman, Jed & Gibson, John, 2012. "Methods of household consumption measurement through surveys: Experimental results from Tanzania," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 3-18.
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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Measuring global hunger: The importance of variances - CEPR (2016) 
      by ? in Alexander J. Stein on 2016-09-04 13:42:00
    2. Measuring global hunger: the importance of variances
      by ? in Anti-Dismal on 2016-09-01 19:51:00
    3. What do we measure when we measure food consumption?
      by ? in World Bank Blogs on 2018-01-24 13:38:00
    4. Measuring global hunger: the importance of variances
      by noreply@blogger.com (Paul Walker) in Anti-Dismal on 2016-09-02 00:51:00

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    chronic hunger; survey design; transient hunger; undernourishment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy

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