An assessment of the global food security index

Abstract

Several measures of food insecurity, whether at the household or at the national level, have been introduced during the past two or three decades. Some concentrate on the determinants of food security while other emphasize more the consequences of food insecurity. The main focus of this paper is on the food security indicators introduced by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the Global Food Security Index (GFSI). The paper has two goals. It first checks whether the set of weights selected by the panel of experts of the EIU plays a crucial role in the ranking of countries by level of food security. Then it examines to what extent the ranking of countries given by the GFSI is sensitive to the list of indicators selected. The empirical analysis conducted, based on statistical techniques such as principal components and efficiency analysis, led us to conclude that both the weights selected and the choice of indicators give a reasonable ranking of countries by level of their food security.