CHAPTER SIX

Livelihoods and Food

Security/insecurity Analysis
Techniques
 Food Security assessment
and the link with nutrition

Module 9
INDICATORS OF LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD SECURITY
 Food security indicators are summary measures
of one or more of the dimensions of food security
used to demonstrate change or the result of a
program activity for a target population.
 Indicators are constructed from a set of
observations, or measurements, of food
security-related conditions, which are classified
according to a set of criteria, aggregated, and
placed in some program relevant perspective.
 In most analyses of food security conditions in
developing countries, multiple indicators are
used to reflect the various dimensions of the
problem.
 Undernutrition

Immediate Inadequate
Disease
causes food intake

Household Poor social Poor

Underlying
food and care Public
causes
insecurity practices Health

Formal and informal infrastructure/

Basic causes
political ideology/resources
CONT.…
 A number of indicators have been developed to
monitor food security along with the development of
the concept of food security.
 The two main categories of indicators are
referred to as “process” and “outcome” indicators.
 Process indicators: provide estimate of food
supply/availability and access/entitlement situation.
 Food availability indicators provide a general
picture of a given area and society.
 These types of indicators are sometimes called at risk
of event indicators.
 They are used to provide the likelihood of a shock or
disaster event that will adversely affect household
food security.
CONT.…
 Examples of food availability indicators include:
 Agricultural production data
 Meteorological data
 Information or access on natural resources
 Institutional development and market infrastructure,
and
 Exposure to regional conflict or its consequences etc.
 Such indicators are in most cases aggregated and
hardly serve to monitor food stress at household
level.
 Their application also varies between places
depending up on the resource potentials of the
area and economic activities of the people.
CONT.…BUT
 Unlike supply indicators “food access” indicators are
relatively effective to monitor food security situation at
a household level.
 Food access indicators may include:
 Land use practices
 Diversification of livestock
 Diversification of income source
 Change of food source
 Livestock sale
 Access to credits
 Migration etc.
 The most important issues related to food access indicators
are the diverse coping strategy household use at time of
decline in food availability.
 Coping strategies are an indication that things are getting
worse.
CONT.…
 Outcome indicators: serve as proxies for measuring
household consumption.
 Household outcome indicators can be grouped into direct
and indirect indicators.
 Direct indicators are those indicators which are closest
to actual food consumption and include:
 Household budget and expenditure
 Food consumption frequency and
 Household perception of food insecurity
 Indirect indicators are generally used when direct
indicators are either unavailable or too costly to collect.
 Indirect indicators include:
 Amount of food in stores,
 Nutritional status,
 Subsistence potential ratio (size of farm, expected yield, and
age and composition of household etc.)
INDICATORS OF HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY
CONT…
 Even though, there are a number of indicators,
some of the most commonly used types of
indicators in the assessment of food security
conditions include those related to:
 Food production
 Income
 Total expenditure
 Food expenditure
 Share of expenditure on food
 Calorie consumption, and
 Nutritional status
CONT.…
 Essential indicators to be included in all food security
and livelihoods assessment are:
Food availability indicators
 Food production, reserves, stocks, imports and
exports along with resources necessary for
production( such as field and pasture conditions), and
opportunities for gathering wild foods provide
information about the quantity and quality of the
food supply.
 The existence of well functioning market systems
from the international to the local level also
influences the food supply and therefore food
availability.
 Food availability indicators are useful for assessing
population level food security status.
CONT…
Food access indicators
 Potential and actual income, expenditures, loan
and remittance mechanisms as well as trade and
market systems provide information about the
way food is obtained.
 Market factors, the price of food and purchasing
power related to employment and livelihood
opportunities influence the ability to obtain food.
 In addition, coping strategies can be an
important mechanism to meet food needs.
 Food access indicators are useful for assessing
household or individual level food security
status.
CONT.…
Food utilization indicators
 Food consumption
 Sanitation conditions
 Nutritional status
 Morbidity and mortality provide information about the use of
food within the household.
 Behaviors such as intra-household food distribution, infant
and young child feeding practices, food storage and
preparation provide information about food utilization.
 Food utilization indicators are useful for assessing
household or individual level food security status.
Livelihood indicators
 Household assets, sources of income and livelihoods,
diversification of income and livelihoods, expenditure and
expenditure ratios provide information about livelihoods.
 Livelihood indicators often provide information about food
access and are closely linked to coping strategies.
CORE FOOD SECURITY AND LIVELIHOODS INDICATORS
TECHNIQUES OF FOOD IN/SECURITY ANALYSIS

1. Household Food Balance Model (HFBM)

 Is a tool used to measure food security status at
the household level.
 This is analytical tool has been used by many
scientific studies to assess household food security
situation and to measure the contribution of
projects to food availability mainly in agriculture
sector.
 The model was initially formulated by Degefa in 1996
adopted from the FAO Regional Food Balance Model.
 It is likely that the established food balance sheet
equation tries to include all the available cereal
and non-cereal food commodities.
CONT.…
Household Food Balance Model:-
 NGA = (GP + GB + FA + GG) - (HL+ GU + GS +GV);
Where,
 NGA =Net grain available/year/household
 GP = Total grain produced/year/household
 GB = Total grain bought/year/household
 FA = Quantity of food aid obtained/year/household
 GG=Total grain obtained through gift or
remittance/year/household
 HL = Post harvest losses/year
 GU=Quantity of grain reserved for seed/year/household
 GS =Amount of grain sold/year/household
 GV =Grain given to others within a year
CONT.…
 As mentioned above, the method has to derive separately
the amount of grains available for domestic utilization
(food use) and other secondary components (grain uses
for other purpose/losses).
 Hence, the net quantity of food available was calculated
and converted into dietary calorie equivalent based
on Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute
(EHNRI)‟s food composition table.
 The calculated calorie was compared against the national
average daily caloric requirement for a moderately
active adult (≥ 2100 kcal) to look into the dietary calorie
status of the households.
 Based on this information, those households who meet
above estimated caloric requirement are categorized as food
secure and otherwise as non- food secure.
CONT.…
Food Composition Table for Use in Ethiopia
CONT.…
2. Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS)
 The Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS)
is a brief survey instrument developed by Food and
Nutrition Technical Assistance(FANTA) to assess
whether households have experienced problems
with food access during the last 30 days.
 The instrument consists of nine occurrence
questions; these questions ask about the changes
households made in their diet or food
consumption patterns as a result of limited
resources to acquire food.
 This tool measures the level of food insecurity during
the past 30 days as self-reported by the household.
CONT.…
 These measured results are then assigned a
categorical designations (food secure, mildly,
moderately, severely food insecure) or given a
numerical value (0-27), with higher numbers
representing a greater level of food insecurity.
 The access component of household food
insecurity is measured through the use of the
Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS).
 The Household Food Insecurity Access Scale
(HFIAS) is a method based on the idea that the
experience of food insecurity (access) causes
predictable reactions and responses that can be
captured and quantified through a survey and
summarized in a scale.
CONT.…
 The HFIAS poses questions of increasing severity
on food security domains, such as anxiety over
food, insufficient dietary quality, and the
quantity of food.
 The HFIAS was developed on the premise that
households across different cultural or social
contexts respond to food insecurity in universal
ways.
 The acquisition of food through socially
unacceptable means was seen as important to
the concept of food insecurity; however, the
difficulty of measuring this dimension cross-
culturally resulted in its elimination from the
survey .
CONT.…
 The HFIAS is a household-level survey; that is, it
allows researchers to understand food insecurity as
experienced by a household, not an individual.
 Data from the HFIAS can be used collectively to
examine community, district or even national
food insecurity; however, it cannot be used to
determine if one household needs more help than
another.
 The survey has two key uses:
 Comparing change over time in one group (useful for
monitoring food security interventions or observing the
impact of events on food security) and
 Comparing food access across populations (useful for
determining which areas are most in need of assistance).
CONT.…
 Household Food Insecurity (Access) Scale Occurrence
Questions
 Did you worry or have anxiety that your household would not have
enough food?
 Were you or any household member not able to eat the kinds of foods
you preferred because of a lack of resources?
 Did you or any household member have to eat a limited variety of
foods (less kinds of food on the plate) due to a lack of resources?
 Did you or any household member have to eat some foods that you
really did not want to eat because of a lack of resources to obtain other
types of food?
 Did you or any household member have to eat a smaller meal than
you felt you needed because there was not enough food?
 Did you or any other household member have to eat fewer meals in a
day?
 Was there ever no food (of any kind) to eat in your household?
 Did you or any household member go to sleep at night hungry?
 Did you or any household member go a whole day and night without
having eaten anything?
CONT.…
Advantages
 The HFIAS is the only tool that directly measures the
household‟s experience of food insecurity, rather than using
proxy measures such as food availability or anthropometry.
 Food availability has been measured in the past as a proxy for
understanding food security; however, while the availability of food
can be measured, it does not assure that individuals or households
have access to it.
 Anthropometric measurements, such as height, weight, arm
circumference, or even skinfolds, have been used as proxies for the
assessment of food security, but these measurements do not take into
account individual variation or illness status (which can be linked to
weight loss).
 Additional advantage HFIAS is its ability to be quickly and
easily administered. If the HFIAS is properly adapted to the
local setting, it is easy both to administer and interpret.
 The survey is also not very disturbing/invasive; participants
do not have to unclothe as they would for anthropometry,
though there may be some embarrassment discussing any food
insecurity experienced by their household.
CONT.…
Limitations
 One limitation of the HFIAS is that within population or places
where food assistance is frequently distributed, respondent bias
may be an issue; that is, households might over-report food
insecurity with the expectation of receiving assistance.
 Another limitation is that the HFIAS should not be used for
targeting assistance to individual households, since
collected data are only meaningful when aggregated for a group or
community. Therefore, even though households can be assigned a
food security category, this category is meaningful only at the
group level.
 In addition, the HFIAS also cannot tell you if there are certain
members of the household that are more vulnerable than
others, since it reports the level of food insecurity for the whole
household.
 The HFIAS does not tell you why households are food insecure.
 It also cannot differentiate between seasonal food insecurity
or global food crises.
CONT.…
3. Household Food Consumption Score (FCS)
 The Food Consumption Score (FCS), a tool developed
by WFP, is commonly used as a proxy indicator for
access to food.
 It is a weighted score based on:
 Dietary diversity,
 Food frequency and
 The nutritional importance of food groups
consumed.
 FCS captures both quality (different food
groups/dietary diversity) and quantity (food
frequency) elements of food security.
 Data is collected on the number of days in the last 7
days a household ate specific food items.
 A seven day recall period is used to make the FCS as
precise as possible and reduce recall bias.
CONT.…
 Food consumption score is a score calculated
using the frequency of consumption of
different food groups consumed by a
household during the 7 days before the survey.
 The Food Consumption Score (FCS) is a proxy
indicator of household food security based
on the weighted frequency (no. of days in a
week) of intake of 8 different food groups.
CONT.…
Questionnaire used to calculate FCS

How many days in the last seven days did your household eat….? write 0 if no
consumption of that food item

Food Item Number of days Food Item Number of days

Rice Potato (including Sweet Potato)

Wheat / Other Cereals Dark Green Vegetables – Leafy

Pulses / Beans / Nuts Other Vegetables

Milk / Milk Products Sugar / Honey

Meat Fruits

Poultry Oil

Eggs Other Food Items

Fish & Seafood (Fresh / Dried)

CONT.…
o The FCS of a household is calculated by
multiplying the frequency of foods consumed
in the last seven days with the weighting of
each food group.
o The weighting of food groups has been
determined by WFP according to the nutrition
density of the food group.
 It is measured as:

FCS= a1x1+ a2x2+ …+ a8x8

Where i=food group, x=frequency, a= weight
o The following table shows the food group
weights.
CONT.…
Detail of food group weights
Food item Food group Weight
Rice Cereals and tubers 2
Wheat/ Other cereals
Potato (incl. sweet potato)
Pulses/Beans/ Nuts Pulses 3
Milk/ Milk Products Milk 4
Meat Meat and fish 4
Poultry
Eggs
Fish and Seafood (fresh/dried)
Dark green vegetable – leafy Vegetables 1
Other vegetable
Sugar/ Honey Sugar 0.5
Fruits Fruit 1
Oil Oil 0.5
CONT.…
 The sum of the scores is then used to determine
the FCS.
 The maximum FCS has a value of 112 which
would be achieved if a household ate each food
group every day during the last 7 days.
 The total scores are then compared to pre-
established thresholds:
 Poor food consumption: 0 to 21
 Borderline food consumption: 21.5 to 35
 Acceptable food consumption: > 35
CONT.…
 Advantages of this methodology include:
 A standardized and more transparent methodology
 The FCS is also able to capture both Dietary
Diversity and Food frequency.
 A repeatable data analysis within a dataset (one
analyst can easily reproduce the FCS on a dataset
identical to that created on the same dataset by
another analyst).
 A comparable analysis between datasets (this does
not imply that the score has the same meaning for all
households in all contexts).
CONT.…
Limitations:
 Doesn‟t tell us the „food gap’ i.e. how much food is
lacking in the diet as it doesn‟t track quantities
 Doesn‟t account for individual nutritional
requirements or seasonal variations
 Needs to be adapted to local contexts
CONT.…
4. Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS)
 Dietary diversity refers to an increase in the
variety of foods across and within food groups
capable of ensuring adequate intake of essential
nutrients that can promote good health.
 Since no single food can contain all nutrients, the
more food groups included in daily diet the
greater the likelihood of meeting nutrient
requirements.
 A diet which is sufficiently diverse may reflect
nutrient adequacy.
 Thus, dietary diversity can be viewed as a proxy
measure of food security.
CONT.…
 The household dietary diversity score (HDDS) is
meant to reflect, the economic ability of a
household to access a variety of foods.
 Studies have shown that an increase in dietary
diversity is associated with socio-economic
status and household food security.
 A more diversified diet is associated with a number of
improved outcomes in areas such as birth weight,
child anthropometric status, and improved
hemoglobin concentrations .
CONT.…
 DDS is calculated by summing the number of
unique food groups consumed during the last
24 hours.
 Food groups considered were cereals/roots,
vegetables, fruits, legumes/lentils, meat/fish/egg
& milk/dairy products.
 DDS is calculated without considering a
minimum intake for the food group.
 A simple count of food items or, more commonly,
food groups consumed over a fixed period of time
(usually 24h) to assess diversity of the diet (but
not frequency of consumption).
CONT.…
Please describe the foods (meals and snacks) that you ate yesterday during the day and night,
whether at home or outside the home. Start with the first food eaten in the morning.
CONT.…
CONT.…
5. Coping Strategy Index (CSI)
 The Coping Strategy Index (CSI), a tool developed by
the World Food Program, is commonly used as a
proxy indicator for access to food.
 The Coping Strategies Index (CSI) is an indicator of
household food security that is relatively simple and
quick to use, straightforward to understand, and
correlates well with more complex measures of food
security.
 A series of questions about how households manage to
cope with a shortfall in food for consumption
results in a simple numeric score.
 In its simplest form, monitoring changes in the CSI score
indicates whether household food security status is
declining or improving.
 A set of simple questions can be developed to capture
people‟s basic consumption-related coping responses to
inadequate access to food in a given culture or location
 CONT.…
Consumption Coping Strategy Responses (CSI)
CONT.…
 It is a weighted score that allows one to measure the
frequency and severity of coping strategies.
 The CSI of a household is calculated by multiplying
the frequency of coping strategies with their
respective severity weights.
 The sum of the scores is then used to determine the
CSI.
 The higher the CSI, the more food insecure a
household is, as a household is using coping
strategies more frequently and/or more severe
ones.
CONT.…
 The frequency is a measure of how many days in the past
week a household had to rely on the various coping
strategies, ranging from “never” (0) to “every day” (7).
 That frequency score is then multiplied by the severity
weight.
 The simplest method of weighting the strategies is that the
group severity ranking and the weighting is the same.
 That is, all the least severe strategies are weighted 1, the
next group is weighted 2, etc.
 It is critical to ensure that the values for both the
frequency and the severity influence the CSI score in the
same way.
 That is the higher the frequency, the higher the
score; and the greater the severity the higher the
severity weighting.
 CONT..
Example Calculating a Household CSI Index Score
CONT.…
 According to the above table, a score of 34 by
itself doesn‟t mean much, if another household
has a score of 55, we could state fairly
unambiguously that the household with a score of
34 is less food insecure (i.e. more food secure)
than the household with a score of 55, provided
that they are both from the same community,
location, or culture for which this CSI tool was
adapted.
CONT.…
 Experience with the CSI has shown that, typically,
food insecure households employ four types of
consumption coping strategies.
 First, households may change their diet. For
instance, households might switch food consumption
from preferred foods to cheaper, less preferred
substitutes.
 Second, the household can attempt to increase
their food supplies using short-term strategies
that are not sustainable over a long period. Typical
examples include borrowing or purchasing on
credit. More extreme examples are begging or
consuming wild foods, immature crops, or even
seed stocks.
CONT.…
 Third, if the available food is still inadequate to
meet needs, households can try to reduce the
number of people that they have to feed by
sending some of them elsewhere (for
example, sending the kids to the neighbors
house when those neighbors are eating).
 Fourth, and most common, households can
attempt to manage the shortfall by limiting
the food available to the household (cutting
portion size or the number of meals, favoring
certain household members over others, or
skipping whole days without eating).
 CONT.…
A LIST OF COPING STRATEGIES
CONT.…
The CSI has a number of applications, such
as:
 The most frequent has been in monitoring,
providing a quick, current status indicator of the
extent of food insecurity that is immediately
useful for programmatic decision making.
 It has also been used in emergencies to monitor
the impact of interventions, including food aid, on
household food insecurity.
 Its third use (also in monitoring) has been as a
food insecurity early warning indicator.
 Lastly, the CSI has been used as an indicator of
longer-term changes in food security status.
6. HOUSEHOLD HUNGER SCALE (HHS)
 Household Hunger Scale (HHS), a simple, new
indicator to assess household hunger in food
insecure areas.
 The HHS consists of three questions and three
frequencies that, when administered in a
population-based household survey, allows for
estimating the percent of households affected by
three different severities of household hunger:
 1) Little to no household hunger
 2) Moderate household hunger and
 3) Severe household hunger
 The HHS can be meaningfully used for assessment,
geographic targeting, and monitoring and
evaluation in settings affected by substantial food
insecurity.
CONT.…
CONT.…
 Responses are scored as:
 No = 0
 Rarely or Sometimes = 1
 Often = 2
 When the HHS is administered, a continuous scale
score (with a minimum possible score of 0 and a
maximum possible score of 6) can be tabulated for
each household in the sample by summing a
household‟s responses to items 1, 2, and 3, where
never=0, rarely or sometimes=1, and often=2.
 Categorical variable created using scale score
0-1 = Little to no household hunger
2-3 = Moderate household hunger
4-6 = Severe household hunger
CONT.…
The HHS is different from other household food
insecurity indicators in that it has been
specifically developed and validated for
cross-cultural use.
 This means that the HHS produces valid and
comparable results across cultures and
settings, so that the status of different population
groups can be described in a meaningful and
comparable way to assess where resources and
programmatic interventions are needed and to
design, implement, monitor, and evaluate policy
and programmatic interventions.
CONT.…
 The HHS is most appropriate to use in areas of
substantial food insecurity.
 In those settings, the HHS can be used for a variety of
objectives, including to:
 Monitor the prevalence of hunger over time across
countries, or regions, to assess progress towards meeting
international development commitments
 Assess the food security situation in a country, or region, to
provide evidence for the development and implementation
of policies and programs that address food insecurity and
hunger
 Monitor and evaluate the impact of anti-hunger policies
and programs, including those that are funded by a specific
donor across a number of cultures and countries
 Provide information for early warning or nutrition and food
security surveillance
 Inform standardized food security/ humanitarian phase
classifications
CONT.…
 While the HHS has the advantage of having been
validated for cross-cultural use, the HHS also has the
limitation of reflecting the more severe range of
household food insecurity, which is characterized
by food deprivation and actual hunger.
 It is important to note that the HHS focuses on the
food quantity dimension of food access and does
not measure dietary quality.
 Additionally, because the HHS is a household level
indicator, it does not capture data on food
availability or food utilization, which are other
components of food security typically measured at the
national level (availability) and individual level
(consumption/utilization).