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Measuring hunger, food security and food consumption

About FIES_resized

About the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)

The FIES is an experience-based metric of food insecurity severity. The FIES is used to estimate the percentage of a population that faces difficulties in accessing enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life. It relies on people’s direct responses to eight questions about their experiences facing constrained access to food.

The methodology is versatile and can be used to report on SDG Indicator 2.1.2 and to develop additional indicators that measure recent and annual food insecurity at household and at individual levels.

Food security and the FIES

Food security is recognized as having four main dimensions: availability, access, utilization, and stability. In addition to these, the concept of food security has evolved to recognize the centrality of agency and sustainability (HLPE, 2020). No single tool can account for the multiple dimensions of food security. The FIES provides measures of the second dimension of food security – food access – at the individual or household level and at different levels of food insecurity severity. Estimates can be compared across countries and sub-populations within countries.

Measuring food security: the global reference scale on food insecurity

The set of eight questions compose a scale that covers a range of severity of food insecurity.

 

The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)

Food insecurity based on the FIES: what does it mean?

 

The FIES global reference scale was developed based on results from the application of the FIES survey module in over 140 countries in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Food insecurity prevalence rates from different countries can be made comparable by calibrating them against this global reference.

Why use the FIES to measure and monitor food insecurity?

  1. Produces timely, reliable and meaningful information on the adequacy of access to food at the individual or household level. 

  2. Can be applied at low cost within any individual or household survey. 

  3. Is a direct measure of the severity of food insecurity experienced by people and households. 

  4. Produces comparable estimates of food insecurity prevalence rates across countries and cultures. 

  5. Allows the estimation of both recent and annual food insecurity rates. 

  6. Enables the analysis of gender differences in food insecurity when applied at the individual level. 

  7. When included in large population surveys, it provides actionable information that policy makers can use to identify vulnerable population groups and guide policy interventions. 

  8. Deepens the understanding of the determinants and consequences of individual and household food insecurity when used together with other indicators in population surveys. 

  9. Contributes to highlighting food security links across sectors, such as nutrition and agriculture, when used to monitor and evaluate policies and programs. 

Promoting use of the FIES at the country level

The full potential of the FIES to generate statistics that can inform policy is realized when the tool is applied in large national population surveys that allow more detailed analyses of the food insecurity situation. This is already the case for a number of countries.

With financial support from the European Union, FAO is building country-level capacity to use the FIES in national surveys, providing technical assistance to national institutions and conducting regional and country-level workshops.

FIES is being adopted by an increasing number of countries and is gaining momentum worldwide, as its numerous advantages are recognized: simplicity, reliability, and the ability to produce results that speak to people and can effect change. The map below shows countries in different stages of adopting FIES, with the goal of being able to report on SDG Indicator 2.1.2 as well as use their results to inform national food security policy.