Pakistan is Among Bottom 25 Countries on Global Hunger Index

Pakistan has been ranked in the bottom half of the Global Hunger Index, a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels.

According to Global Hunger Index 2021, Pakistan ranks 92nd out of the 116 countries on the list. With a score of 24.7, Pakistan has a level of hunger that is considered serious.

On the other hand, in the long term, Pakistan’s score on the Global Hunger Index has improved significantly since the turn of the century.

In 2000, Pakistan had a score of 36.7, which was considered alarming at that time. The score decreased to 33.1 in 2006 and 32.1 in 2012, which were considered serious.

How the Index is Calculated?

Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide are the two international organizations that publish the Global Hunger Index each year to assess progress and setbacks in the global fight against hunger by assigning scores to countries on the list.

They use a three-step process to assign scores to countries on Global Hunger Index a specific score.

Step 1

In this step, values against four indicators are determined. These indicators are undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting, and child mortality. Undernourishment is the share of the population that is undernourished. Child wasting is defined as the share of children aged 5 or less having low weight for their height.

Child stunting is defined as the share of children aged 5 or less having low height for the age. Children mortality is the mortality rate of children aged 5 or less.

Step 2

In this step, each of these indicators gets a standardized score on a 100-point scale. This scale is based on the highest value observed for the particular indicator on an international level in recent decades.

Step 3

In this step, these standardized scores are aggregated to calculate the final severity score for each country. The scores range from 0 to 100, where 0 suggests that the country has no hunger while 100 suggests that the values of a country’s four indicators were the highest in the world. The lower the score, the better the country ranks on Global Hunger Index

It must be noted here that Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide source the undernourishment data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of (FAO), child mortality data from the United Nations Interagency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UNIGME), child wasting and child stunting data from the joint database of UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Bank, as well as from WHO’s continuously updated Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition, the most recent reports of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), and statistical tables from UNICEF.



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