Why in the News?

India ranks 111 out of a total of 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023, with its progress against hunger nearly halted since 2015, reflecting a global trend.

Key Findings of Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023:

• India holds a Global Hunger Index score of 28.7 on a 100-point scale, categorizing its severity of hunger as "serious."
• The global GHI score for 2023 is 18.3, considered moderate.
• Latin America and the Caribbean stand out as the only region in the world where GHI scores have deteriorated between 2015 and 2023.
• South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara emerge as the global regions with the highest hunger levels, each having GHI scores of 27.0.

About the Global Hunger Index:

• The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels, reflecting multiple dimensions of hunger over time.
• The GHI is intended to raise awareness and understanding of the struggle against hunger, provide a way to compare levels of hunger between countries and regions and call attention to those areas of the world where hunger levels are highest and where the need for additional efforts to eliminate hunger is greatest.
• It is prepared jointly by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and the German organisation Welt Hunger Hilfe.
• How the GHI Is Calculated?
• Each country’s GHI score is calculated based on a formula that combines four indicators that together capture the multidimensional nature of hunger:
• Undernourishment: the share of the population whose caloric intake is insufficient;
• Child stunting: the share of children under the age of 5 who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition;
• Child wasting: the share of children under the age of five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition; and
• Child mortality: the share of children who die before their 5th birthday, reflecting in part the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.
• The indicators included in the GHI formula reflect caloric deficiencies as well as poor nutrition.
• The undernourishment indicator captures the food access situation of the population as a whole, while the indicators specific to children reflect the nutrition status within a particularly vulnerable subset of the population for whom a lack of dietary energy, protein, and/or micronutrients (essential vitamins and minerals) leads to a high risk of illness, poor physical and cognitive development, and death.
• The inclusion of both child wasting and child stunting allows the GHI to document both acute and chronic undernutrition.
• By combining multiple indicators, the index minimizes the effects of random measurement errors.
• These four indicators are all part of the indicator set used to measure progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)