35% of Global Population Could Not Afford a Healthy Diet in 2022: Uneven Recovery Post-Pandemic, with 16 Million More in Low-Income Economies Affected

New data show that 35% of the global population could not afford a healthy diet in 2022. While this share has decreased since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when 38% were affected, recovery has been slower in lower-income economies. And in low-income economies, where the population rose by 6% over this period, an extra 16 million people found a healthy diet unaffordable in 2022 compared with 2020. Globally, the average cost of a healthy diet — defined as one that meets requirements for energy and food-based dietary guidelines — was $3.96 per person per day in 2022.

These new data on the Cost of a Healthy Diet (CoHD) and the unaffordability of a healthy diet –measured by the Prevalence of Unaffordability (PUA) (or share of population) and the Number of people unable to afford a healthy diet (NUA) – were updated jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Bank. These indicators are published in the United Nations’ flagship report State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2024: Financing to End Hunger, Food Insecurity, and Malnutrition in All Its Forms, which tracks progress toward ending hunger and malnutrition, as envisioned by Sustainable Development Goal 2. These data are also available through FAOSTAT and the World Bank’s Food Prices for Nutrition DataHub and DataBank.

How does the cost of a healthy diet vary across the globe?

In 2022, the cost of a healthy diet per person per day was highest in middle-income economies at around $4.20, while in low-income economies the cost was $3.48 and in high-income economies $3.78. In terms of regions, both Latin America and the Caribbean, and East Asia and Pacific recorded an average cost of around $4.50, while in North America the cost of a healthy diet was $2.96 — the lowest of any region in 2022.

The cost of a healthy diet — measured in dollars converted using current purchasing power parities (PPPs) derived from the International Comparison Program (ICP) — has risen since 2017, the year for which data are first available. This is in step with rising global food prices and general inflation over recent years, largely driven by disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine which further exacerbated inflationary pressures (SOFI 2024, Masters and Finaret, 2024).

What do the new data tell us about affordability?

Many people have a daily income that is too low to afford a healthy diet of even the cheapest locally available foods. Of the 2.8 billion people around the world who were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022, the large majority — nearly 1.7 billion — lived in lower-middle income economies, where the prevalence of unaffordability was 53%. Low-income economies had the largest prevalence of unaffordability — 72%, representing 503 million people.¹

The downward trend observed since 2017 in the prevalence of unaffordability was interrupted in 2020 for middle- and low-income economies when the onset of COVID caused both higher food prices and lower income. Since then, prevalence has dropped from 25% to 22% between 2020 to 2022 in upper-middle income economies, and from 56% to 53% in lower-middle income economies. However, in low-income economies, the prevalence only decreased marginally over the period, by one percentage point, and limited fiscal capacity makes it difficult for states to fill the large and persistent affordability gap.

There has been an uneven recovery since the pandemic across regions. Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa remain at a similar level of prevalence of unaffordability seen in 2020. The prevalence in other regions has declined with South Asia’s recovery being notable recording a drop in prevalence of five percentage points.

How are these data constructed and what updates have been introduced?

A healthy diet, which follows food-based dietary guidelines, is essential for preventing malnutrition and reducing the risk of non-communicable diseases. The cost of this diet is estimated using the least-expensive locally available foods, while the prevalence of unaffordability for this diet also considers essential non-food expenses of low-income consumers as identified proportions of international poverty lines.

In close collaboration with its global partners, the World Bank and the FAO led the methodological improvement for these indicators, and systematically monitor and disseminate the data series. In 2024, the entire series was revised due to the introduction of three significant updates. The methodology to compute the indicators is available in the Annexes and Supplementary Materials of the SOFI report.

• New Food Price Data: The cost of a healthy diet indicator for 2017 to 2022 was calculated using updated 2021 global retail food prices from the latest ICP cycle, replacing the 2017 data used in previous editions. These 2021 data included price data for new locally available nutritious food items, enabling a review of the composition of the healthy diet basket in each country.
• Revised Calculation Methods: Based on the latest data from the World Bank, a new method was applied that accounts for the cost of basic non-food needs based on international poverty lines and the non-food expenditure shares of low-income consumers in countries. It allows for a more accurate reflection of costs across countries of different income groups. This new method results in a recalibration of the prevalence of unaffordability and the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet.
• Imputed Estimates: For the first time, estimates for the prevalence and number of people unable to afford a healthy diet were imputed for economies with missing information by their regional and/or income classification. This provides a more comprehensive global picture.

Putting the data to work

As the world continues to face challenges from global disruptions and economic inequalities, ensuring access to affordable, healthy diets remains a key priority for achieving development goals and informing policies to improve food and nutrition security and nutritional outcomes. The updated cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) and the unaffordability of a healthy diet indicators (PUA and NUA) provide critical insights for addressing disparities and guiding interventions in three specific domains.

• For agriculture and food supplies, comparing costs per day reveals where and when even the most affordable locally available healthy diets are unusually expensive, and reveals which items have lower costs elsewhere. Those comparisons can then guide investment to improve food value chains that currently limit access to healthy diets.
• For social protection and assistance, comparing diet costs to incomes available for food reveals which populations have the lowest affordability of healthy diets. These comparisons can then guide the targeting and level of safety net and assistance programs.
• For health and nutrition education, comparing least cost health diets to observed dietary intake reveals where factors other than price and income drive food choice. These comparisons can then guide changes in the food environment or behavioral and community interventions to improve diet quality and health.

Policy makers and stakeholders are urged to leverage these updated indicators to develop and implement strategies that ensure economic access to healthy diets for all.