The Link between Poverty and Undernourishment : Uncovering a Methodological Flaw

In their Food Security Assessment the United States Department of Agriculture uses income data and a cross-country Engel curve for food energy (energy-income curve) to estimate distribution sensitive food gaps of developing countries. In a recent paper Senauer and Sur (Review of Agricultural Economics 23 (2001) pp. 68-81) use the same methodology to estimate headcount ratios of undernourishment. We show that the estimated Engel curve underestimates individual food consumption and, hence, overestimates food gaps and headcount ratios due to a serious flaw in the methodology