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	How do we measure poverty? by ATD Fourth World   As the international community prepared new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the question of how we measure poverty became more important than ever before.   One of the conclusions of ATD’s participatory research on the Millennium Development Goals was that current measures of extreme poverty are inadequate. Some global statistics are very uncertain. In addition, the $1.90 a-day indicator of extreme poverty is deeply flawed.   Extreme poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon. ATD Fourth World works on the question of measuring poverty on three fronts:   With people living in poverty, to include them as partners in building knowledge on development; With researchers and international organizations, to find the best ways to measure poverty; With governments and international organizations, to ensure that multidimensional measures of poverty are included in international sustainable development goals.   On the research front, we undertook a multi-year participatory research project, in collaboration with Oxford University, that connected people who have a direct experience of poverty with other experts.   A key aim of this research was to complement “top down” definitions of poverty with experiential ones, and to demonstrate that it is possible to develop research methodologies that enable the fulfillment of human rights obligations to engage people in poverty in global policy making.   * Access the report (56pp): http://bit.ly/3zrklDr   http://www.atd-fourthworld.org/international-advocacy/dimensions-of-poverty/ http//storiesofchange.atd-fourthworld.org/ Visit the related web page
	State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019 by WFP, FAO, Unicef, WHO, IFAD   820 million people did not have enough to eat in 2018, up from 811 million in the previous year, which is the third year of increase in a row.   This underscores the immense challenge of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of Zero Hunger by 2030, says a new edition of the annual The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report released today.   The pace of progress in halving the number of children who are stunted and in reducing the number of babies born with low birth weight is too slow, which also puts the SDG 2 nutrition targets further out of reach, according to the report.   At the same time, adding to these challenges, overweight and obesity continue to increase in all regions, particularly among school-age children and adults.   The chances of being food insecure are higher for women than men in every continent, with the largest gap in Latin America.   "Our actions to tackle these troubling trends will have to be bolder, not only in scale but also in terms of multisectoral collaboration," the heads of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) urged in their joint foreword to the report.   Hunger is increasing in many countries where economic growth is lagging, particularly in middle-income countries and those that rely heavily on international primary commodity trade.   The annual UN report also found that income inequality is rising in many of the countries where hunger is on the rise, making it even more difficult for the poor, vulnerable or marginalized to cope with economic slowdowns and downturns.   "We must foster pro-poor and inclusive structural transformation focusing on people and placing communities at the centre to reduce economic vulnerabilities and set ourselves on track to ending hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition," the UN leaders said.   Slow progress in Africa and Asia   The situation is most alarming in Africa, as the region has the highest rates of hunger in the world and which are continuing to slowly but steadily rise in almost all subregions. In Eastern Africa in particular, close to a third of the population (30.8 percent) is undernourished.   In addition to climate and conflict, economic slowdowns and downturns are driving the rise. Since 2011, almost half the countries where rising hunger occurred due to economic slowdowns or stagnation were in Africa.   The largest number of undernourished people (more than 500 million) live in Asia, mostly in southern Asian countries. Together, Africa and Asia bear the greatest share of all forms of malnutrition, accounting for more than nine out of ten of all stunted children and over nine out of ten of all wasted children worldwide. In southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, one child in three is stunted.   In addition to the challenges of stunting and wasting, Asia and Africa are also home to nearly three-quarters of all overweight children worldwide, largely driven by consumption of unhealthy diets.   This year's report introduces a new indicator for measuring food insecurity at different levels of severity and monitoring progress towards SDG 2: the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity.   This indicator is based on data obtained directly from people in surveys about their access to food in the last 12 months, using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES).   People experiencing moderate food insecurity face uncertainties about their ability to obtain food and have had to reduce the quality and/or quantity of food they eat to get by.   The report estimates that over 2 billion people, mostly in low and middle-income countries, do not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food.   But irregular access is also a challenge for high-income countries, including 8 percent of the population in Northern America and Europe.   This calls for a profound transformation of food systems to provide sustainably-produced healthy diets for a growing world population.   To safeguard food security and nutrition, the 2019 report stresses the importance of economic and social policies to counteract the effects of adverse economic cycles when they arrive, while avoiding cuts in essential services.   The report highlights that the uneven pace of economic recovery 'is undermining efforts to end hunger and malnutrition, with hunger increasing in many countries where the economy has slowed down or contracted'.   The report also found that income inequality is rising in many of the countries where hunger is on the rise, making it even more difficult for the poor, vulnerable or marginalized to cope with economic slowdowns and downturns.   Economic slowdowns or downturns disproportionally undermine food security and nutrition where inequalities are greater.   'Income inequality increases the likelihood of severe food insecurity, and this effect is 20 per cent higher for low-income countries compared with middle-income countries', the report spells out.   The report concludes with guidance on what short and long-term policies must be undertaken to safeguard food security and nutrition during episodes of economic turmoil or in preparation for them, such as integrating food security and nutrition concerns into poverty reduction efforts using pro-poor and inclusive structural transformations.   Key facts and figures:   Number of hungry people in the world in 2018: 821.6 million (or 1 in 9 people). In Asia: 513.9 million. In Africa: 256.1 million. In Latin America and the Caribbean: 42.5 million   Number of moderately or severely food insecure: 2 billion (26.4%)   Babies born with low birth weight: 20.5 million (one in seven). Children under 5 affected by stunting (low height-for-age): 148.9 million (21.9%) Children under 5 affected by wasting (low weight-for-height): 49.5 million (7.3%).   http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition Visit the related web page
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