Food & Water Hygiene

Indicator Definition

Classification of health risks related to drinking water and food.

Coding Methodology

The Hassle Factor (HF) Food and Water safety indicator is a composite measure that combines two sub-indicators: water safety and food safety.  We used World Health Organization (WHO) data for both sub-indicators.  For the water safety sub-indicator, we used the “Population using improved drinking-water sources” data. For the food safety sub-indicator, we used the “International health regulations monitoring framework” data. We selected these data sets as they cover more countries than any other available data sets available.

The HF food and water safety metric weights both sub-indicators evenly and converts them to a seven-point scale using the following formula:  

• Food and Water Safety 2008 = 11 – (water ₂₀₀₈ + food ₂₀₁₀) x 0.05*
• Food and Water Safety 2010 = 11 – (water ₂₀₁₀ + food ₂₀₁₀) x 0.05
• Food and Water Safety 2012 = 11 – (water ₂₀₁₂ + food ₂₀₁₂) x 0.05
• Food and Water Safety 2014 = 11 – (water ₂₀₁₄ + food ₂₀₁₄) x 0.05
• Food and Water Safety 2016 = 11 – (water ₂₀₁₆ + food ₂₀₁₆) x 0.05

* WHO data for this sub-indicator was not available prior to 2010.

Data for both sub-indicators was expressed on a 1-100 scale, 1 being the lowest measure and 100 the highest. The scales were combined by adding the sub-indicator scores for each country, resulting in a 2-200 scale. This was converted to a 1-10 scale by multiplying the results by 0.05. To invert the scale, the results were subtracted from 11. Finally, any scores higher than 7 were manually reduced to 7. The manual conversation was applied to 28 out of 900 scores or +/- 3%.    

Data Imputation

In instances where countries were missing sub-indicator data points, we estimated the sub-indicator score using the average of all available data points between 2010 and 2017 for that county. Click here to view the estimated values.  In instances where no sub-indicator data was available for a country, scores were estimated using the average of the sub-indicator scores from within that country’s World Bank (WB) Economic Classification for that year. To calculate these averages we used the same method we applied to the business facilitation indicator. The following tables summarize the imputation for the food safety sub-indicator.

Sources

World Health Organization. 2019 Global Health Observatory Data Repository Food Safety

World Health Organization/UNICEF. 2019. Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply Water