Comparing Household Food Consumption Indicators to Inform Acute Food Insecurity Phase Classification Bapu Vaitla, Jennifer Coates, and Daniel Maxwell December 2015
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FAMINE EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS NETWORK Comparing Household Food Consumption Indicators to Inform Acute Food Insecurity Phase Classification Bapu Vaitla, Jennifer Coates, and Daniel Maxwell December 2015 FANTA FHI 360 1825 Connecticut Ave., NW Washington, DC 20009-5721 Tel: 202-884-8000 Fax: 202-884-8432 [email protected] www.fantaproject.org This publication is made possible by the generous Recommended Citation support of the American people through the support Vaitla, Bapu; Coates, Jennifer; and Maxwell, Daniel. of the Office of Health, Infectious Diseases, and 2015. Comparing Household Food Consumption Nutrition, Bureau for Global Health, U.S. Agency for Indicators to Inform Acute Food Insecurity Phase International Development (USAID) and the Bureau Classification. Washington, DC: FHI 360/Food and for Africa, under terms of Cooperative Agreement No. Nutrition Technical Assistance III Project (FANTA). AID-OAA-A-12-00005, through the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance III Project (FANTA), managed by Contact Information FHI 360. Additional support was provided by the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance III Project Network (FEWS NET) activity, managed by Chemonics (FANTA) International Inc. under Contract No. AID-OAA-I-12- FHI 360 00006. 1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20009-5721 The contents are the responsibility of FHI 360 and T 202-884-8000 FEWS NET and do not necessarily reflect the views of F 202-884-8432 USAID or the United States Government. [email protected] www.fantaproject.org December 2015 Comparing Household Food Consumption Indicators to Inform Acute Food Insecurity Phase Classification Contents Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................................ i Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................... iii 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 1 2 Food Security Measurement and the IPC Approach ....................................................................... 4 2.1 Food Security Measurement ......................................................................................................... 4 2.2 The IPC Approach ........................................................................................................................ 4 2.3 Indicators in the Acute IPC Household Reference Table ............................................................. 6 2.4 Description of Key Study Indicators ............................................................................................. 7 3 Literature Review ............................................................................................................................. 10 3.1 Relationships among Measures of Food Security ....................................................................... 10 3.1.1 Household Diet Diversity Indicators ............................................................................................. 10 3.1.2 Experiential Indicators .................................................................................................................. 12 3.1.3 Multi-Indicator Comparisons ........................................................................................................ 14 3.1.4 Summarizing the Food Security Measurement Landscape ........................................................... 15 3.2 Summary of Key Issues and Implications for Empirical Analysis ............................................. 16 3.2.1 Dimensions of Food Security ........................................................................................................ 16 3.2.2 Convergence among Indicators in Their Continuous and Categorical Forms ............................... 17 3.2.3 Objective and Subjective Indicators .............................................................................................. 17 3.2.4 Aggregate Methods versus Disaggregated Approaches ................................................................ 18 3.2.5 Severity and Sensitivity ................................................................................................................. 18 3.2.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 18 4 Data, Methods, and Findings ........................................................................................................... 20 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 20 4.2 Data ............................................................................................................................................. 20 4.3 Descriptive Statistics, Correlations, and Cross-Tabulations ....................................................... 26 4.3.1 Descriptive Statistics ..................................................................................................................... 26 4.3.2 Correlations ................................................................................................................................... 32 4.3.3 Cross-Tabulations ......................................................................................................................... 36 4.4 What Explains the Relationships between Indicators? ............................................................... 47 4.4.1 The “Dimensionality” of Food Insecurity ..................................................................................... 47 4.4.2 The Alignment of Indicator Categories ......................................................................................... 60 5 Discussion: Linking Findings to the IPC ........................................................................................ 67 5.2 Summary of Results .................................................................................................................... 67 5.2 Anchoring Indicators and Thresholds to IPC Phases .................................................................. 68 5.3 Study Limitations ........................................................................................................................ 73 5.4 Conclusions and Implications for Future Studies ....................................................................... 73 Appendix A. CSI Distributions by Dataset ............................................................................................. 80 Comparing Household Food Consumption Indicators to Inform Acute Food Insecurity Phase Classification Appendix B. Categorical Results by Indicator and Dataset .................................................................. 82 Appendix C. Cutoff Choices and Concordance between Indicators .................................................... 85 Appendix D. Cross-Tabulation Results by Indicator Pair and Dataset ............................................. 102 Appendix E. Principal Components Analysis Communalities Table ................................................. 111 Appendix F. Detailed Results of Alignment Analysis .......................................................................... 113 Appendix G. Household Economy Approach Outcome Analysis Threshold Alignment Pilot ........ 127 Comparing Household Food Consumption Indicators to Inform Acute Food Insecurity Phase Classification Acknowledgments This analysis relied on organizations’ willingness to share data from their own work. As such, we thank colleagues from the following stakeholder groups for their readiness to share their data and associated resources and for their patience in fielding our questions as we cleaned and prepared the data for analysis: Action Against Hunger (Action Contra la Faim), Catholic Relief Services, Food for the Hungry, the Food Security Coordinating Unit of Haiti, the Food Security Monitoring Unit of Blue Nile and South Kordofan in Sudan, the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia, the Kenya Food Security Steering Group, Mekelle University in Ethiopia, Mercy Corps, the Relief Society of Tigray, Save the Children U.S., Tufts University, UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP), and the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Laura Glaeser and Megan Deitchler at the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance III Project (FANTA); Chris Hillbruner at the Famine Early Warning Systems Network; Astrid Mathiassen at WFP; and Leila Oliveira at the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Support Unit, all of whom provided valuable comments on drafts of this report and helped guide the totality of this work to this concluding document. We would also like to thank FANTA’s Communications Team for making this document publication-ready. Any remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the authors. i Comparing Household Food Consumption Indicators to Inform Acute Food Insecurity Phase Classification Abbreviations and Acronyms CFSVA Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Assessment CSI Coping Strategies Index FANTA Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance III Project FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAST Food Access Survey Tool FCS Food Consumption Score