The Challenge of Measuring Hunger through Survey

Joachim De Weerdt, Kathleen Beegle, Jed Friedman () and John Gibson

LICOS Discussion Papers from LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, KU Leuven

Abstract: There is widespread interest in estimating the number of hungry people in the world and trends in hunger. Current global counts rely on combining each country's total food balance with information on distribution patterns from household consumption expenditure surveys. Recent research has advocated for calculating hunger numbers directly from these same surveys. For either approach, embedded in this effort are a number of important details about how household surveys are designed and how these data are then used. Using a survey experiment in Tanzania, this study finds great fragility in hunger counts stemming from alternative survey designs. As a consequence, comparable hunger numbers will be lacking until more effort is made to either harmonize survey designs or better understand the consequences of survey design variation.

Keywords: hunger prevalence; measurement error; consumption; survey design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C88 O12 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Challenge of Measuring Hunger through Survey (2016)
Working Paper: The challenge of measuring hunger through survey (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lic:licosd:36515

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