Quantifying global shocks to self-assessed household food insecurity

Global food security faces considerable uncertainty given a myriad of threats including population growth, conflict, climate change, environmental degradation, and reductions in non-renewable water resources. Satisfying the UN sustainable development goal of zero hunger by 2030 will require improvements to production efficiency, better distribution networks, and targeted efforts to improve access among the most vulnerable communities. A key research challenge to ensuring global food security for all people at all times is to identify and assess country-level drivers that promote or undermine food security by focusing on temporal changes in food insecurity. We utilize a metric of self-assessed food insecurity from the Gallup World Poll to identify drivers of food insecurity and explore the reliability and uncertainty of this survey-based indicator. We then build a multiple regression framework accounting for economic growth, bilateral trade, domestic food production, and governance indicators to disentangle the multiple drivers of changes in food insecurity over time. Results highlight that food insecurity is exacerbated by economic contraction, shocks to agricultural production, and that food insecurity in countries with ineffective governance tends to be more variable. These findings present a framework for further research into the drivers that control food security and will assist with identifying potential policy measures to alleviate food insecurity.