CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS 75


nine-country study, Ivanic and Martin (2008) estimate that 105 million people could be thrown into dollar-a-day poverty. Clearly this estimate is extremely tenuous, given the diversity of country circumstances (for example, net buyers/ net sellers and degrees of transmission) and that many of the largest poor countries (China, India, and Indonesia) were scarcely affected at all. In its 2008 state of food insecurity publication, FAO (2008) estimates that the number of chronically hungry people in 2007 increased by 75 mil- lion over its estimate of 848 million undernourished in 2003–05, with much of the increase attributed to high food prices. These estimates are also very provisional but are at least more comprehensive. The estimation technique is as follows. First, trends in dietary energy supply are derived from detailed “supply utilization accounts” and more recent data covering cereals, oils, and meats available for human consumption (accounting for about 80 percent of dietary energy supply). Next, the more recent data were used to extrapolate the core database to 2007. Finally, the 2007 estimates were used to capture the impact of food prices on hunger at the global and regional levels only. These estimates suggest that Asia accounts for 41 million of the extra 75 mil- lion undernourished, Africa for 24 million, and Latin America and the MENA region for the remaining 10 million. FAO (2008) argues that its figures may underestimate the increase in hunger because it is assumed that the distribu- tion of dietary energy intake stays the same when prices rise, whereas micro- economic work suggests otherwise (Zezza et al. 2008). Rosen and Shapouri (2008) of the USDA estimate an increase of 133 million extra malnourished people in some 70 countries. Their estimate is significantly higher, because they choose a required caloric intake of 2,200 calories that is not adjusted for age and gender, factors which can reduce the required intake to as low as 1,600 calories. Despite the usual caveats, estimates of malnutrition incidence have the benefit of not having to rely on assumptions about price transmis- sion. The downside is that not all of the increase in malnutrition can be attributed to rising food prices, although rising prices are justifiably a prime suspect.


Distribution of Poverty Impacts across Socioeconomic Groups and Individuals


The diversity of microeconomic vulnerability across socioeconomic groups within countries is also a major issue. Clearly there are a range of factors that influence the vulnerability of households to rising food prices within and across countries. Zezza et al. (2008) go further than the three simulation studies examined at the start of this section by disaggregating vulnerability across groups and explaining vulnerability measures with ordinary least squares regressions. Across 13 developing countries from different parts of the devel-


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