part of the IFPRI EGYPT SEMINAR SERIES

1. 1
Measuring Food and
Nutrition Security in Egypt
Derek Headey
Senior Research Fellow
Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
d.headey@cgiar.org

2. Will draw on several recent publications:
• Headey D, Ecker O. 2013. Rethinking the Measurement of
Food Security: From First Principles to Best Practice. Food
Security. 5, 327–43.
• Headey, D., 2013. The Impact of the Global Food Crisis on
Self-Assessed Food Security. World Bank Economic Review
27, 1-27.
• Barrett, C.B., Headey, D.D., 2014. A Proposal for Measuring
Resilience in a Risky World, in: Fan, S., Pandya-Lorch, R.,
Yosef, S. (Eds.), Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security.
IFPRI, Washington DC. (short version published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

3. 1.1 By 2030, eradicate $1.25/day poverty
1.2 By 2030, reduce “national” poverty by ½
1.3 Social protection systems
1.4 By 2030, build the resilience of the poor
2.1 By 2030, end hunger; access to safe, nutritious and
sufficient food all year round
2.2 By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, (40%
reduction in pre-schooler stunting and wasting)
2.3 & 2.4 Productive and sustainable food systems
SOME RELEVANT SDG TARGETS

4. • Measuring poverty, food security, undernutrition and
resilience is very challenging, potentially very
expensive, but potentially very beneficial
“Measurement drives diagnosis and response.”
Barrett (2010; pp. 827)
• No coincidence that some of best national success
stories have invested the most in measurement:
 Bangladesh: nutrition surveillance system, 1990-present
 Peru: continuous (annual) Demographic Health Survey
BACKGROUND

5. • Here I want to pose two questions:
1. What do we need to measure?
2. What sort of measurement systems need to be in place
to cost-effectively measure what we want to measure?
• Caveats
 Answers to these questions are partially contextual,
and partly based on good principles, good empirical
science, and historical experience
 I am not an Egyptologist , so I am really talking about
good principles and best international practice
BACKGROUND

6. • Some of the many issues cited in Egypt SSP Working
Paper #1:
1. Slow and non-inclusive economic growth,
unemployment, inflation, low productivity
2. Fragmented social protection systems
3. Water & land constraints (less sensitive to weather)
4. Dual burden of under- and over-nutrition
5. Poor quality data
• Important to align these information targets to
survey instruments
BACKGROUND

8. • “Food security is … when all people, at all times, have
physical, social & economic access to sufficient, safe and
nutritious food …” -FAO (1996)
• “Development resilience is the capacity over time … to
avoid poverty in the face of various stressors and in the
wake of myriad shocks. If and only if that capacity is and
remains high over time, then the unit is resilient.”
-Barrett and Konstas (2015)
• e.g. You may be non-poor now, but are you resilient to a
50% increase in wheat prices, a 12- month spell of
unemployment, a failed cotton crop, etc ?
CONCEPTS & PRINCIPLES

9. CONCEPTS & PRINCIPLES
Concept Principles
All people -Subnationally representative surveys
-Measure individuals not just households
-Additional focus on vulnerable populations?
All times -Measurement at sufficiently high frequency
-Use economic models to “stress-test”
resilience of key sub-populations
Sufficient, safe
& nutritious
food
-Focus on dietary quality, not just calories
-Focus on nutrition outcomes
-Food safety & disease environment
Psychological,
social, political
-Psychological indicators of food security
arguably important in their own right

10. • Concepts and table above tells us we need a menu of food
security, resilience and nutrition indicators to meet the
different principles set out in these definitions
• Moreover, different indicators have different strengths
and weaknesses
• In the last 20 years there has been huge expansion of food
security and nutrition indicators
• This is a good thing, but there is no significant consensus
on which indicators can serve which functions
• Headey and Ecker (2013) provides some quite critical
review of these indicators
WHAT TO MEASURE?

11. WHAT TO MEASURE?
Indicator types Strengths and Weaknesses
Calories (“hunger”)
(e.g. FAO, or survey-
based calories per
adult equivalent)
-Conceptually close to basic hunger concept
-Typically measured at household level, not children/mothers
-Not always closely associated with nutrition outcomes
-Not obviously sensitive to shocks (e.g. 1998 Indonesian crisis)
-Measured infrequently or expensively
Monetary poverty
(e.g. $1.25/day)
-Typically measured at household level not child/mother
-Undernourished children found in poor households
-Measured infrequently or expensively
Dietary diversity
(e.g. 0-7 food groups in
last 24 hrs)
-Measured for individuals cheaply, but no universal thresholds
-Coarse food groups not food quantities
-Related to knowledge, not just poverty or food insecurity
-Potential sensitive to shocks
Experiential indicators
(e.g. HFIAS)
-Measured for households or adults cheaply (not children)
-Subjectivity invalidates inter-personal & inter-temporal validity?
-Sensitivity to phrasing, placement in survey, response biases
Nutrition outcomes
(e.g. stunting, anemia)
-Measured for individuals
-Affected by many non-food determinants
-Indicators either too broad (stunting) or too narrow (anemia)

12. WHAT TO MEASURE?
• All indicators face some common problems, such as
neglect of seasonality
Good news is more attention being paid to “best practice”:
 Ruel et al. review experience with dietary diversity
indicators through a nutritional lens
 Headey & Ecker (2013) and World Bank paper focus on
food security properties of dietary diversity indicators
 World Bank LSMS team has made major inroads on
improving poverty and expenditure measurement
 FAO, USDA, Gallup “Voices of the Poor” project on use of
experiential indicators

13. WHAT TO MEASURE?
• But international experience is only a rough guide for how
an indicator will work in any given context. Why?
Cultural factors influence intrahousehold distribution
Cultural factors strongly influence experiential indicators
Dietary diversity indicators to predict nutrient adequacy
or food security is highly context specific
• Need for context-specific experimentation and validation
• Still need to focus on a range of indicators
• I would emphasize more attention for dietary diversity:
Cheap, Nutritionally Important, Sensitive to Shocks

14. MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS
• “Measurement systems” refers to the broader strategy for
collecting the requisite indicators
• It includes questions such as:
1. Which surveys will measure which indicators?
2. Who will be responsible for different surveys?
3. How often will different surveys be conducted?
4. At what level of aggregation will surveys be
representative at?
5. How can surveys be designed to be more cost-effective?
• These are practical questions, but researchers should
start getting involved in searching for the answers

15. MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS
• In Egypt, as in most countries, there are many different
surveys being conducted for different purposes
• Important to make sure that the system as a whole
adheres to the principles flagged above
Concept Principles
All people -Subnationally representative surveys
-Measure individuals not just households
-Additional focus on vulnerable populations?
All times -Measurement at sufficiently high frequency
-Use economic models to “stress-test” resilience of key sub-
populations
Sufficient, safe &
nutritious food
-Focus on dietary quality, not just calories
-Focus on nutrition outcomes
-Food safety & disease environment
Psychological, social,
political
-Psychological indicators of food security arguably important in
their own right

16. MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS
• One major flaw is lack of high frequency data:
• Big problem for monitoring resilience and food security in
the wake of both expected and unexpected shocks
• Big problem for evaluating efficacy of safety net programs
Some potential innovations for higher frequency surveys:
 Nutrition surveillance system as in Bangladesh (several
times per year for a cost of about USD 1m/year).
 Mix thick rounds (all data) with cheaper thin rounds
(selected indicators likely to vary more over time)
 Continuous DHS, as in Peru

17. • Thanks for listening, and I’m happy to answer
questions or receive follow-up emails:
d.headey@cgiar.org