EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2022: Statistics and Trends

1.2. Prevalence of food insecurity based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale

The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) is an estimate of the proportion of the population facing moderate or severe constraints on their ability to obtain sufficient food over the course of a year. People face moderate food insecurity when they are uncertain of their ability to obtain food and have been forced to reduce, at times over the year, the quality and/or quantity of food they consume due to lack of money or other resources. Severe food insecurity means that individuals have likely run out of food, experienced hunger and, at the most extreme, have gone for days without eating, putting their health and well-being at serious risk.

Severe food insecurity affected 2.9 percent of the people in the ECA region in 2021 (far lower than the world average of 11.7 percent), up from 1.8 percent in 2014 and 1.5 percent in 2019 (Figure 3, Table 2). By subregion in 2021, 5.3 percent of people were affected by severe food insecurity in the Western Balkans, 4.9 percent in Central Asia, 2.3 percent in the Caucasus, 1.2 percent in CIS Europe and Ukraine, 2.1 percent in the EU27 and the United Kingdom and 0.9 percent in EFTA countries. Only the EFTA subregion saw a decrease from 2014; in all other subregions, the percentage of severely food insecure people increased. However, the percentage of severely food insecure people was below the world average in all subregions.

The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the ECA region was 12.4 percent in 2021, up from 10.6 percent in 2014 (Figure 3, Table 2). There was an increase in 2021 of 1.1 percentage points over 2020 (11.3 percent). In 2021, the global average was 29.3 percent. As for subregions, in Central Asia, 20.2 percent of the people were severely or moderately food insecure in 2021, compared to 19.8 percent in the Western Balkans, 16.9 percent in the Caucasus and 10.2 percent in CIS Europe and Ukraine.

In 2021, only the EFTA countries and the EU27 and the United Kingdom saw decreases from 2014. Other subregions experienced increases, with the largest being in the Central Asia subregion (8.5 percent in 2014 up to 20.2 percent in 2021).

An estimated 27.4 million people in Europe and Central Asia experienced severe food insecurity in 2021 (Figure 4), a 27 percent increase from 2020, when the number was 21.5 million, and a 64 percent jump from 2014. The number had decreased from 2014 to 2019, by 2.4 million, but started to grow in 2020. The region accounted for 2.5 percent of the global total of 850.1 million in 2020, and in 2021, the ECA region accounted for 3 percent of the global total.

The number of severely food insecure people decreased between 2020 and 2021 in the Caucasus, which is consistent with the observed decrease in the PoU. In EFTA countries and the Western Balkans, the number of severely food insecure people remained unchanged from 2020 to 2021. In the other subregions, the number of severely food insecure people increased.

In the ECA region, 116.3 million people were estimated to be moderately or severely food insecure in 2021, which accounts for 5 percent of the global average (Table 3). Despite that the global prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity remained mostly unchanged from 2020 to 2020 after increasing sharply in 2020, the ECA region saw an increase of 10.7 million. The global average annual growth was below 1 percent, and in the ECA region, the annual growth was 10 percent. There was a decrease in the number of moderately or severely food insecure people only in the CIS Europe and Ukraine (Figure 4, Table 3); in the other ECA subregions, the number grew.

Among the countries with a high prevalence for the period 2019–2021, the largest number of moderately or severely food insecure people (6.5 million) lived in Uzbekistan. But, as indicated in the breakdown by subregion, many countries with a low prevalence had significant numbers of people affected by moderate or severe food insecurity in 2019–2021: France (3.9 million), Germany (2.9 million), Italy (3.8 million), the Russian Federation (8 million) and Spain (4 million).

The data show that in many countries, the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity was high and trending upward even before the pandemic. Figure 5 shows that in comparison with 2014–2016, in 2019–2021 the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity increased in many countries in the ECA region, including by large amounts in Uzbekistan and Georgia. During same period, significant progress was achieved in Albania, Armenia, Greece, Lithuania and Romania (although in Albania the prevalence remains high, at more than 30 percent).

In the ECA region, women are more likely than men to be food insecure. Figure 6 shows that in 2021, the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity was higher for women in the region (15.8 percent) than it was for men (13.8 percent). This gender bias in access to food was widespread across all subregions, although the difference in some of them is within the margin of error. In 2021, 34.1 percent of women in the rest of ECA were food insecure, 5.4 percentage points higher than men (28.7 percent). In CIS Europe and Ukraine, the prevalence among women (20.1 percent) was 3.6 percentage points higher than the prevalence among men (16.5 percent), and in the Caucasus, where 19.1 percent of women and 16.3 percent of men were food insecure, the difference was 2.8 percentage points.