About the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU)
The PoU, SDG Indicator 2.1.1, is FAO’s traditional indicator used to monitor hunger at the global and regional levels. The PoU is an estimate of the proportion of the population facing serious food deprivation, meaning they consume an insufficient amount of dietary energy. Combined with the measure of food insecurity based on the FIES, the PoU can be used to measure progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2: end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
The origin of the PoU
FAO began publishing assessment of food inadequacy in 1946, in its World Food Surveys. As the emphasis of the debate on food security shifted from food availability to access to food, in 1961, a method to estimate the percentage of those within a population who are at risk of not having sufficient food was presented.
The Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) was introduced in 1974 as a method to estimate the prevalence of inadequate access to food. It was based on the log-normal distribution of usual dietary energy intake.
From 1999, the PoU was adopted as an official indicator for the Millennium Development Goals and from 2015 it was adopted as Indicator 2.1.1 of target 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals: end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
Undernourishment and hunger
Undernourishment is defined as the condition in which an individual’s usual food consumption is insufficient to provide the amount of dietary energy required to maintain a normal, active, healthy life. For the purposes of global monitoring, hunger is operationally defined as being synonymous with chronic undernourishment. Undernourishment should not be confused with undernutrition, which is the outcome of poor nutritional intake in terms of quantity and/or quality, and/or poor nutrient absorption due to frequent or prolonged illness.
Why use the PoU to measure and monitor undernourishment?
- Provides estimates of the proportion of a population that is persistently consuming an insufficient amount of food.
- Provides useful information about general trends and changes in hunger over time; FAO has published global and regional estimates since 1974 and estimates for countries since 1999.
- Can be used to measure progress towards SDG 2.
- It can support an analysis of the main causes leading to undernourishment, e.g. food availability and access to food.
The PoU is not useful to:
- Identify undernourished individuals.
- Monitor short-term impacts of national or local level policies and programmes.
- Evaluate short term events that can affect food availability and access to food (e.g. price variations).