Diet affordability indicators incorporate the latest poverty and inequality data to monitor access to a healthy diet

The Food Prices for Nutrition platform provides indicators on the cost and affordability of a healthy diet and other dietary standards in countries across the world. These metrics help us monitor progress towards making healthy diets more accessible and affordable, and subsequently guide policies in the context of food security and good nutrition for all. They also supports efforts within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030 (SDG 2).   

This blog presents updated diet affordability data from the Food Prices for Nutrition project. These data incorporate updated income distributions and international poverty lines based on 2017 purchasing power parities (PPPs) from the International Comparison Program (ICP) and other updates incorporated in September 2022 by the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP). They are an update to the data published in the annual United Nations flagship publication “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022” (SOFI 2022), which were developed in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and presented at the World Bank Live event “Are healthy diets affordable”.

Diet affordability metrics

Food Prices for Nutrition provides a number of diet affordability indicators, based on the cost of three diets that meet different dietary quality standards – a healthy diet, a nutrient-adequate diet, and an energy-sufficient diet.

The suite of diet affordability indicators available for each of these dietary standards are constructed using different approaches that compare the cost of the diet to a person’s income or consumption.

The first approach establishes a “food poverty line” based on the international poverty line for extreme poverty. The second approach considers the income distribution of a population within a country. For both methods, we assume that the share of household income available to spend on food is around 52%. This assumption is based on 2017 household expenditure data from national accounts compiled by the ICP in low-income countries. Our third approach to measuring affordability compares the diet cost against observed food expenditures in each country, again from national accounts data compiled by the ICP.

Using these different methods, Food Prices for Nutrition publishes four affordability indicators at the national level - see the table below. Indicators 2 and 3 are also available at the regional and global levels.

Diet affordability metrics using the latest Poverty and Inequality data: key findings

The data story below assesses the impact of the revised PIP data as well as new population data published by World Development Indicators on the diet affordability metrics published by Food Prices for Nutrition. Click through the key findings and use the links to further explore how food costs around the world result in many people being unable to afford a healthy diet.

These diet affordability metrics that incorporate the poverty and inequality data released in September 2022 can be accessed on the World Bank DataBank through the Food Prices for Nutrition Dataset Version 1.1. Dataset Version 1.0, available to users through the same link, includes the Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet indicators currently available on the FAOSTAT’s data portal. The next official update of the Food Prices for Nutrition Dataset – Version 2.0 – will incorporate the latest poverty and inequality data and will be launched at the same time as the publication of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023.

To find out more please visit Food Prices for Nutrition or contact us at fpn@worldbank.org. We look forward to hearing from you!