World Food Day 2022: India Tops Hunger Charts in South Asia

[Riaz Haq]

India ranks 107th for hunger among 121 nations. The nation fares worse than all of its South Asian neighbors except for war-torn Afghanistan ranked 109, according to the Global Hunger Index 2022. Sri Lanka ranks 64, Nepal 81, Bangladesh 84 and Pakistan 99. India and Pakistan have levels of hunger that are considered serious. Both have slipped on the hunger charts from 2021 when India was ranked 101 and Pakistan 92. 

South Asia Hunger Rankings. Source: GHI/IASScore

India’s child wasting rate (low weight for height), at 19.3%, is worse than the levels recorded in 2014 (15.1%) and even 2000 (17.15), and is the highest for any country in the world and drives up the region’s average owing to India’s large population, according to The Hindu newspaper. The child hunger situation has gotten worse since Mr. Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister of India in 2014.  Earlier this year, Prime Minister Modi offered to "feed the world" in the aftermath of the Ukraine war.  Within weeks of this pledge he ended making an about-face.  On World Food Day 2022, the United Nations World Food Program has warned of another year of global record hunger looms amid food and climate crisis. 

India Hunger Trends. Source: GHI

Pakistan Hunger Trends. Source: GHI

Pakistan has a score of 26.1 and ranks 99th out of the 121 countries on Global Hunger Index rankings. India's GHI score is 29.1 and it ranks 107th. Hunger could worsen in Pakistan in the aftermath of the worst-ever flooding that has destroyed wheat and rice crops in southern Sindh province. Flood waters have not yet drained from the fields and standing water is preventing planting of the Rabi (winter) crop now. Here's an excerpt of USDA Food and Grain report on the wheat situation in Sindh:

"Farmers normally begin planting the wheat crop in mid-October and November in Sindh and Punjab, respectively. Sindh province usually accounts for almost twenty percent of national wheat production. However, large areas of Sindh typically planted to wheat are still submerged, and it may be several months before the flood waters recede. With Sindh’s flat terrain, poor drainage, and current high-water table, flood waters are receding slowly. As a result, seeding the 2023/24 wheat crop in Sindh is likely to be delayed and some areas may possibly remain unseeded. Even where the waters recede, farmers are likely to face difficulties in wheat planting as the floods washed away on-farm wheat seed stock in many areas. Additionally, farmers’ purchasing power in the affected areas is severely compromised making it difficult for them to buy fertilizers and other inputs".  

The number of hungry people around the world has shot up from 282 million to around 345 million since the beginning of 2022, and by mid-year, according to the United Nations World Food Program. “We are facing an unprecedented global food crisis and all signs suggest we have not yet seen the worst”, said WFP Executive Director David Beasley. “For the last three years hunger numbers have repeatedly hit new peaks. Let me be clear: things can and will get worse unless there is a large scale and coordinated effort to address the root causes of this crisis. We cannot have another year of record hunger”.

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[Riaz Haq]

The Hindu
@the_hindu
Just in | Government again rejects Global Hunger Index which ranks #India 107 among 121 countries, says it is "an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues." |
@jagritichandra
reports.

https://twitter.com/the_hindu/status/1581283026495229952?s=20&t...

[Riaz Haq]

In the 2022 Global Hunger Index, Pakistan ranks 99th out of the 121 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2022 GHI scores. With a score of 26.1, Pakistan has a level of hunger that is serious.

https://www.globalhungerindex.org/pakistan.html

In the 2022 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 107th out of the 121 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2022 GHI scores. With a score of 29.1, India has a level of hunger that is serious.

https://www.globalhungerindex.org/india.html

-------------------

India also ranks below Sri Lanka (64), Nepal (81), Bangladesh (84), and Pakistan (99). Afghanistan (109) is the only country in South Asia that performs worse than India on the index.


https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-ranks-107-out-of-121-countries-on-global-hunger-index/article66010797.ece


India ranks 107th among 121 countries on the Global Hunger Index, in which it fares worse than all countries in South Asia barring war-torn Afghanistan.

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, regional, and national levels. GHI scores are based on the values of four component indicators — undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and child mortality. Countries are divided into five categories of hunger on the basis of their score, which are ‘low’, ‘moderate’, ‘serious’, ‘alarming’ and ‘extremely alarming’.



Based on the values of the four indicators, a GHI score is calculated on a 100-point scale reflecting the severity of hunger, where zero is the best score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst.

India’s score of 29.1 places it in the ‘serious’ category. India also ranks below Sri Lanka (64), Nepal (81), Bangladesh (84), and Pakistan (99). Afghanistan (109) is the only country in South Asia that performs worse than India on the index.



Seventeen countries, including China, are collectively ranked between 1 and 17 for having a score of less than five.

India’s child wasting rate (low weight for height), at 19.3%, is worse than the levels recorded in 2014 (15.1%) and even 2000 (17.15), and is the highest for any country in the world and drives up the region’s average owing to India’s large population.

Prevalence of undernourishment, which is a measure of the proportion of the population facing chronic deficiency of dietary energy intake, has also risen in the country from 14.6% in 2018-2020 to 16.3% in 2019-2021. This translates into 224.3 million people in India considered undernourished.

But India has shown improvement in child stunting, which has declined from 38.7% to 35.5% between 2014 and 2022, as well as child mortality which has also dropped from 4.6% to 3.3% in the same comparative period. On the whole, India has shown a slight worsening with its GHI score increasing from 28.2 in 2014 to 29.1 in 2022. Though the GHI is an annual report, the rankings are not comparable across different years. The GHI score for 2022 can only be compared with scores for 2000, 2007 and 2014..



Globally, progress against hunger has largely stagnated in recent years. The 2022 GHI score for the world is considered “moderate”, but at 18.2 in 2022 is only a slight improvement from 19.1 in 2014. This is due to overlapping crises such as conflict, climate change, the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Ukraine war, which has increased global food, fuel and fertiliser prices and is expected to "worsen hunger in 2023 and beyond."



The prevalence of undernourishment, one of the four indicators, shows that the share of people who lack regular access to sufficient calories is increasing and that 828 million people were undernourished globally in 2021.

There are 44 countries that currently have “serious” or “alarming” hunger levels and “without a major shift, neither the world as a whole nor approximately 46 countries are projected to achieve even low hunger as measured by the GHI by 2030,” notes the report.

[Riaz Haq]

The title of the UNDP paper is "Unpacking Deprivation Bundle". Below is an excerpt from it:

"The analysis first looks at the most common deprivation profiles across 111 developing countries (figure 1). The most common profile, affecting 3.9 percent of poor people, includes deprivations in exactly four indicators: nutrition, cooking fuel, sanitation and housing.7 More than 45.5 million poor people are deprived in only these four indicators.8 Of those people, 34.4 million live in India, 2.1 million in Bangladesh and 1.9 million in Pakistan—making this a predominantly South Asian profile "

https://hdr.undp.org/system/files/documents/hdp-document/2022mpirep...


Also note in this UNDP report that the income poverty (people living on $1.90 or less per day) in Pakistan is 3.6% while it is 22.5% in India and 14.3% in Bangladesh.

[Riaz Haq]

The headline multidimensional poverty (MPI) figures for Pakistan (0.198) are worse than for Bangladesh (0.104) and India (0.069). This is primarily due to the education deficit in Pakistan.  UNDP's report titled "Unpacking Deprivation Bundle" shows that an average Pakistani still enjoys a better "standard of living" than his/her counterparts in Bangladesh and India. Below is an excerpt from it:

"The analysis first looks at the most common deprivation profiles across 111 developing countries (figure 1). The most common profile, affecting 3.9 percent of poor people, includes deprivations in exactly four indicators: nutrition, cooking fuel, sanitation and housing.7 More than 45.5 million poor people are deprived in only these four indicators.8 Of those people, 34.4 million live in India, 2.1 million in Bangladesh and 1.9 million in Pakistan—making this a predominantly South Asian profile "

https://hdr.undp.org/system/files/documents/hdp-document/2022mpirep...


Also note in this UNDP report that the income poverty (people living on $1.90 or less per day) in Pakistan is 3.6% while it is 22.5% in India and 14.3% in Bangladesh.

Living standards  (Cooking fuel Sanitation Drinking water Electricity Housing Assets) of the poor in Pakistan (31.1%) are better than in Bangladesh (45.1%) and India (38.5%). 

Pakistan fares worse in terms of education (41.3%) indicators relative to Bangladesh (37.6%) and India (28.2%). 

In terms of health, Pakistan ( 27.6%) fares better than India (32.2%) but worse than Bangladesh (17.3%). 

In terms of population vulnerable to poverty, Pakistan (12.9%) does better than Bangladesh (18.2%) and India (18.7%)

[Riaz Haq]

Multidimensional poverty index ( does not include income poverty)

https://ophi.org.uk/multidimensional-poverty-index/mpi-faqs/

What does the MPI measure?

The MPI identifies overlapping deprivations at the household level across the same three dimensions as the Human Development Index (living standards, health, and education). It shows the incidence of poor people in a population and the intensity of deprivations with which poor households contend. For details see Alkire and Santos 2010, 2014. Read more about the MPI methodology here.

What makes a household “multidimensionally” poor?

One deprivation alone may not represent poverty. The MPI requires a household to be deprived in multiple indicators at the same time. A person is multidimensionally poor if he or she is deprived in at least one third of the weighted indicators (see below for definitions of ‘severe’ poverty and ‘vulnerable’ to poverty).

Why is income not included?

We could not include income due to data constraints. Income poverty data come from different surveys, and these surveys often do not have information on health and nutrition. For most countries we are not able to identify whether the same people are income poor and also deprived in all the MPI indicators. Therefore, we could not include income.

How was the MPI created?

The MPI was created by Alkire and Santos and other researchers at OPHI, who applied a new technique developed by Sabina Alkire and James Foster to over 100 developing countries. Read more about the Alkire Foster method for multidimensional measurement.

The MPI is described as a measure of acute poverty. How does this differ from extreme poverty?

The MPI reflects the severe deprivations that people face at the same time. Because it was designed to compare acute poverty across developing nations, it is most relevant to less developed countries. We have described the MPI as a measure of ‘acute’ poverty to avoid confusion with the World Bank’s measure of ‘extreme’ poverty that captures those living on less than $1.90 a day.

------------------

What are the new thresholds for each indicator?

The new threshold for nutrition includes BMI (Body Mass Index)-for-age, and stunting as well as underweight for children. For child mortality, it considers whether a child has, sadly, perished in the household in the last five years preceding the interview date. For years of schooling, the new threshold requires six years, rather than five years, of schooling. A household is deprived in the housing indicator if the floor is made of natural materials; or the roof or walls are made of natural or rudimentary materials. Finally, the assets indicator now includes ownership of computers and animal carts. More info here.

Why was the original MPI modified?

The global MPI was originally created in 2010 and much has changed in the past eight years! Most notably, the new global MPI takes into consideration the Sustainable Development Goals, which were agreed upon in 2015. The new version also builds on an innovative MPI, trialed since 2014, and newly available data to include cut-offs that were not possible in 2010.

[Riaz Haq]

#PakistanFloods could increase #poverty by 2.5 to 4.0 percentage points as a direct consequence of the #floods, with adverse human development effects in disaster-affected areas in #Sindh, #Balochistan. #Pakistan https://www.dawn.com/news/1715252

The World Bank says the national poverty rate in Pakistan could increase by 2.5 to 4.0 percentage points as a direct consequence of the floods, with adverse human development effects in disaster-affected areas.

The size and duration of shocks will vary across locations and households, depending on the intensity of the flooding as well as the quality of relief and reconstruction efforts, the World Bank says in its latest ‘Macro Poverty Outlook for Pakistan’ released during the course of ongoing IMF-World Bank annual meetings.

According to the outlook made available on Saturday, the high inflation and devastating floods will have an adverse impact on poverty. While rising prices reduced the real purchasing power of all households, the floods primarily affected rural areas in Sindh and Balochistan where poverty rates are already high.

Poor households are more dependent on agricultural income and spend a larger share of their income on food, and therefore will be disproportionally affected by the loss of harvest and assets like housing and livestock, and rising prices, the report notes.

The economic outlook and prospects for overdue adjustment have been significantly affected by the floods. Agricultural output is expected to decline sharply, with losses to cotton, date, wheat, and rice crops. Nearly a million livestock is estimated to have perished.

Cotton losses are expected to weigh on the domestic textile industry and the wholesale and transportation service industries. Public relief and limited reconstruction activities are expected to partially offset the loss in activity.

Real GDP growth is therefore expected to slow to 2.0 percent in the fiscal year 2023 but recover to 3.2 percent by the fiscal year 2024, supported by a recovery in agricultural production, reconstruction efforts, and projected lower global inflationary pressures.

Due to higher energy prices, flood disruptions, and the weaker rupee, inflation is projected to rise to 23.0 percent in the fiscal year 2023 but moderate over the forecast horizon with declining international energy prices and resolution of flood-related supply constraints.

Despite flood-associated effects, the current account deficit is expected to narrow slightly to 4.3 percent of GDP in the fiscal year 2023 with slower domestic economic activity and is projected to shrink further in 2024 as exports recover from flood impacts.

In line with fiscal consolidation efforts, the fiscal deficit is projected to contract modestly to 6.8 percent of GDP in FY23, despite negative revenue impacts from the flooding and increased expenditure needs. The fiscal deficit is expected to gradually narrow over the medium term as revenue mobilization measures, particularly GST harmonization and personal income tax reform, take hold.

With rapid nominal GDP growth, public debt as a share of GDP is projected to decline gradually over the forecast period, despite continued primary deficits. The macroeconomic outlook is predicated on the IMF-EFF programme remaining on track.

The outlook notes that despite an economic rebound in FY21 and fiscal year 2022, persistent structural weaknesses of the Pakistani economy, such as low productivity growth due to low investment and exports, are hindering a sustained recovery.

Expansionary Covid-related macroeconomic policies supported aggregate demand that has contributed to pressures on domestic prices, the external sector, the exchange rate, and foreign reserves. In response, the Government, amid the ongoing monetary tightening, passed a contractionary 2023 budget and reversed unsustainable energy price subsidies.

[Riaz Haq]

Old data, changing methodology — why number of Indians under poverty line is a mystery
India's official poverty estimates are more than a decade old. A consumption expenditure survey was last conducted in 2017-18 but its findings were never accepted by the govt.

https://theprint.in/economy/old-data-changing-methodology-why-numbe...


Last year, the NITI Aayog had released its Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which said that about one in every four Indians (25 per cent) was living in poverty. Unlike estimates mentioned earlier that focused largely on consumption expenditure, the MPI takes into account factors such as sanitation, schooling, access to drinking water, cleaner fuel etc.

How many Indians moved out of poverty?
The NSO, which conducts the crucial CES, falls under the purview of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). According to a Press Information Bureau (PIB) release from earlier this year, year-long field work for the 2022-23 consumption expenditure survey was initiated by the central government in July.

The central government also conducts the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), through which it defines beneficiaries of poverty alleviation schemes.

However, India does not have up-to-date data for either of these surveys.

ThePrint reached MoSPI via phone and email for a response on when results of the latest CES will be published, but did not receive a response at the time of publication. This report will be updated when a response is received.

“Both the SECC and CES [latest data] are more than 10 years old, so, as of today, we do not know how many Indians have entered poverty and how many have moved out,” said Sen.

Human development economist Santosh Mehrotra added that consumption expenditure survey “has been used consistently for decades while revising poverty estimates and absence of this data means the government is denying itself an exact count on how many people are poor in this country”.

“I don’t think the results of the survey will be out before the 2024 elections. It could be consequential for the government as increase in poverty tarnishes its image of being effective in providing for the poor. In 2019, CES was leaked and then junked because it showed this government in poor light,” he told ThePrint.

Mehrotra also said that absence of poverty data may not impact the government’s policy decisions about programmes aimed at poverty reduction.

“This government’s policy decisions are dependent on political objectives. It keeps denying itself the actual poverty numbers and keeps reintroducing its free food grain scheme as elections near. I doubt if the absence of data is any hindrance in its public policy since it doesn’t want to believe in real data.”

[Riaz Haq]

Indian journalist Shekhar Gupta on UNDP-Oxford Multidimensional Poverty (MPI) 2022 Report:

https://youtu.be/d3KEjsHPgjo

https://hdr.undp.org/system/files/documents/hdp-document/2022mpirep...

[Riaz Haq]

Global Multidimensional
Poverty Index 2022


https://hdr.undp.org/system/files/documents/hdp-document/2022mpirep...

A special section of this report highlights trends
over 15 years in India, where the number of poor people dropped by about 415 million. The poorest states
reduced poverty the fastest, and deprivations in all
indicators fell significantly among poor people. Poverty among children fell faster in absolute terms, although India still has the highest number of poor
children in the world (97 million, or 21.8 percent of
children ages 0–17 in India).6

----------

In India 415 million people exited poverty between 2005/06 and 2019/21, demonstrating that
the Sustainable Development Goal target 1.2 of
reducing at least by half the proportion of men,
women and children of all ages living in poverty in
all its dimensions according to national definitions
by 2030 is possible to achieve—and at scale. The
poorest states and groups (children, lower castes
and those living in rural areas) reduced poverty the
fastest in absolute terms, although the data do not
reflect post-Covid-19 pandemic changes.
• Of the 81 countries with trend data, covering
roughly 5 billion people, 72 experienced a statistically significant reduction in absolute terms in MPI
value during at least one of the periods analysed.
• Addressing poverty requires better data. The infrequency of household surveys makes it difficult to
assess the true impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
on poverty. The data revolution must not leave the
collection of poverty data behind.

---------

Table 1 at the end of the report presents global MPI estimates using the latest surveys available at the time of
computation. The year of the surveys ranges from 2010 to 2020/2021. This edition provides updated estimates for
12 countries, including India, and introduces estimates for three countries.2 The 2022 estimates are based on Multiple
Indicator Cluster Surveys for 54 countries, Demographic and Health Surveys for 45 countries and national surveys
for 12 countries. For 83 countries, home to 81.3 percent of poor people, data were fielded in 2016 or later—after the
Sustainable Development Goals were adopted. Of these, 35 countries, home to 37.1 percent of poor people, have
data fielded in 2019 or later. Harmonized trends are presented for 81 countries using data from 2000 to 2020/2021.
Of these, 35 countries have data for three points in time, and one country, Gambia, has data for four.
Although most data predate the COVID-19 pandemic, they nevertheless offer a reference point for measuring the
pandemic’s impact on poverty.

--------

The analysis first looks at the most common deprivation profiles across 111 developing countries (figure 1).
The most common profile, affecting 3.9 percent of
poor people, includes deprivations in exactly four
indicators: nutrition, cooking fuel, sanitation and
housing.7
More than 45.5 million poor people are deprived in only these four indicators.8
Of those people,
34.4 million live in India, 2.1 million in Bangladesh
and 1.9 million in Pakistan—making this a predominantly South Asian profile (figure 2).
The four deprivations in this bundle are embedded in other poverty profiles too. Beyond the
45.5 million poor people who are deprived in only
these four indicators, 328.9 million poor people are
deprived in these four indicators and others. Of the
374.4 million poor people deprived in these four indicators (some of whom are deprived in others),
224.8 million are in Sub-Saharan Africa, 122.9 million are in South Asia and 26.7 million are in other
regions.

[Riaz Haq]

Multidimensional poverty MPI Pakistan 2022

https://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/Country-Profiles/MPI/PAK.pdf

Table A compares multidimensional poverty with monetary poverty measured by the percentage of the population living below 2011 PPP US$1.90 per day. It shows that monetary poverty only tells part of the story. The headcount or incidence of multidimensional poverty is 34.7 percentage points higher than the incidence of monetary poverty. This implies that individuals living above the monetary poverty line may still suffer deprivations in health, education and/or standard of living. Table A also shows the percentage of Pakistan’s population that lives in severe multidimensional poverty. The contributions of deprivations in each dimension to overall poverty complete a comprehensive picture of people living in multidimensional poverty. Figures for Bangladesh and India are also shown in the table for comparison.

-------

What is the global Multidimensional Poverty Index?
Sustainable Development Goal 1 aims to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. The global
Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) measures acute multidimensional poverty across more than 100
developing countries. It does so by measuring each person’s overlapping deprivations across 10 indicators
in three equally weighted dimensions: health, education and standard of living (see figure). The health and
education dimensions are based on two indicators each, while standard of living is based on six indicators.
All the indicators needed to construct the MPI for a country are taken from the same household survey.
Each indicator is equally weighted within its dimension, so the health and education indicators are weighted
1/6 each, and the standard of living indicators are weighted 1/18 each. The MPI is the product of the
headcount or incidence of multidimensional poverty (proportion of people who are multidimensionally poor)
and the intensity of multidimensional poverty (average share of weighted deprivations, or average
deprivation score,1 among multidimensionally poor people) and is therefore sensitive to changes in both
components. A deprivation score of 1/3 (one-third of the weighted indicators) is used to distinguish between
the multidimensionally poor and nonpoor. If the deprivation score is 1/3 or greater, the household (and
everyone in it) is classified as multidimensionally poor. Individuals with a deprivation score greater than or
equal to 1/5 but less than 1/3 are classified as vulnerable to multidimensional poverty. Finally, individuals
with a deprivation score greater than or equal to 1/2 live in severe multidimensional poverty. The MPI ranges
from 0 to 1, and higher values imply higher multidimensional poverty. The MPI complements the
international $1.90 a day poverty rate by identifying who is multidimensionally poor and also shows the
composition of multidimensional poverty.