| Methodological explanations |
The indicator has been used by FAO to monitor among others one of the MDG targets (i.e. halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger). It allows monitoring trends in the extent of dietary energy deficit. The indicator is a result of the combination of changes in the overall availability of food, in the households’ ability to access it, and in the socio-demographic characteristics of the population, as well as differences across countries and regions in any given moment in time. Undernourishment is defined by FAO as the condition by which a person has access, on a regular basis, to amounts of food that are insufficient to provide the energy required for conducting a normal, healthy and active life, given his or her own dietary energy requirements. While the undernourishment condition applies to individuals, the indicator can only be referred to a population, or group of individuals (due to conceptual considerations). The prevalence of undernourishment is thus an estimate of the percentage of individuals in that group, but it does not allow for the identification of which individuals in the group are, in fact, undernourished. |
