VALIDATING OPERATIONAL FOOD SECURITY INDICATORS AGAINST A DYNAMIC BENCHMARK

Food security indicators used in practice are static in nature, thereby foregoing the key dimension of food security. This study develops an explicitly forward-looking food insecurity indicator and relative to this dynamic benchmark, we evaluate the performance of three readily available indicators: an agricultural production, a dietary diversity, and a coping strategy index. Calculation of our "gold standard" indicator, using panel data of 274 households from Mali, shows that neglecting the future may lead to substantial underestimation of a population's food insecurity. However, when compared to our "gold standard", the alternative indicators all identify most of the food insecure, with the coping strategy index displaying the most predictive power. This is an important result, given the great demand for operational, inexpensive and reliable food insecurity indicators.