Comparison of Two Different Approaches to Measuring Economic Access to Food and Insecurity: an Application on Household Income and Expenditure Survey in Mexico

Abstract

The UN SDG 2 establishes the achievement of food security by 2030. However, the pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and what was primarily a prob- lem of emerging countries now also characterizes developed countries. Measuring economic access to food properly is an important issue to be addressed in order to allow a constant official monitoring of the phenomenon. By using the Mexican Na- tional Survey of Household Income and Expenditure data, the aim of this paper is to assess the convergence between a qualitative assessment of food insecurity and an indicator of economic access to food obtained from Household Budget Surveys, usually carried out in several countries. As the first analyses suggest, when qual- ity assessment of food insecurity is difficult to obtain, the food access economic indicator can be used instead to support data driven policy decisions.