How does WFP Measure Food Security?
The Consolidated Approach for Reporting Indicators of Food Security (CARI) is a standardized methodology developed by WFP to classify households based on their level of food insecurity. It uses data from a single household survey to provide a transparent and robust analysis, ensuring comparability and reliability across assessments.
The CARI approach generates an overall food security classification by combining indicators into two domains: current status and coping capacity. These domains are then summarized into a Food Security Index, categorizing households as:
Food secure
Marginally food secure
Moderately food insecure, or
Severely food insecure.
Four Key Indicators in CARI:
Food Consumption Score: Measures dietary diversity, nutritional adequacy and frequency of food consumption, categorizing households into acceptable, borderline, or poor consumption groups.
Reduced Coping Strategies Index: Assesses the extent to which households adopt coping strategies to address food shortages, such as reducing meal sizes or skipping meals.
Economic Vulnerability Indicators:
Economic Capacity to Meet Essential Needs: Evaluates whether households have sufficient income or resources to meet essential needs beyond just food.
Food Expenditure Share: The proportion of total household expenditure spent on food. Higher shares indicate greater vulnerability.
Livelihood Coping Strategies Index: Evaluates the severity of livelihood-based coping mechanisms employed by households to address food shortages.
These indicators collectively identify the severity and drivers of food insecurity. Together with key demographic indicators such as location, sex of the head of household disability status etc., this enables targeted interventions.