More than a third of the world’s population could not afford a healthy diet in 2022, and some regions have yet fully to recover from the harms wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an innovative data set published in the 2024 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, the flagship hunger report issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and four sister United Nations agencies issued from Rome.

While food prices increased throughout 2022, pushing up the average cost of a healthy diet, this was largely offset by economic recovery and the ensuing positive income effects. As a result, some 35.4 percent of the global population, equal to 2.826 billion people, were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022. That compares to 36.4 percent and 2.823 billion in 2019. However, this recovery to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 was achieved in an uneven manner across regions.

‘In 2022, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet dropped below pre-pandemic levels in the group of upper-middle- and high-income countries. In contrast, low-income countries had the highest levels since 2017,’ the first year for which FAO has published estimates, said Maximo Torero, Chief Economist of FAO.

The finding highlights ‘a major structural problem of our agrifood systems,’ said David Laborde, Director of FAO’s Agrifood Economics and Policy Division. He noted this part of the SOFI 2024 report revealed significant variation across and within regions that in turn point to where national and international attention should be prioritized.

The share of people in Africa unable to afford a healthy diet was 64.8 percent. In Asia, the figure is 35.1 percent; in Latin America and the Caribbean, 27.7 percent; in Oceania 20.1 percent; and in Northern America and Europe, 4.8 percent.

In low-income and lower-middle-income countries, the number of people unable to afford healthy diets grew from 2019 to 2022, an outcome that reflects how post-pandemic economic recoveries were unevenly shared and how more advanced economies were better placed to cope with supply-chain shocks and worldwide inflationary pressure on food commodity prices.

The SOFI 2024 report details the methodology used to calculate the affordability of a healthy diets, defined as comprising diversity, adequacy, moderation and balance. The main takeaway is that the prices, in purchasing power parity (PPP), rose significantly – a global average of 6 percent in 2020 and 11 percent in 2021 – but the impact was diluted where income growth was also robust and where food as a share of household budgets was lowest, as in higher-income countries with greater fiscal capacities.

‘The uneven progress in the economic access to healthy diets cast a shadow of achieving Zero Hunger in the world, six years away from the 2030 deadline,’ the SOFI report says. ‘There is the need to accelerate the transformation of our agrifood systems to strengthen their resilience to the major drivers and address inequalities to ensure that healthy diets are affordable for and available to all. But there is also a need to assure people that can access and consume healthy diets,’ said Torero.

Mapping the details

The global average cost of a healthy diet rose to 3.96 PPP dollars – a measure that compares purchasing power parity across economies – in 2022. Subregional variations were considerable, ranging from a high of 5.34 PPP dollars in Eastern Asia to a low of 2.96 PPP dollars in Northern America. For Africa, the average price was 3.74 PPP dollars; for Asia 4.20 PPP dollars; for Latin America and the Caribbean 4.56 PPP dollars; for Oceania 3.46 PPP dollars and for Northern America and Europe 3.75 PPP dollars, with a sizable difference between Southern Europe, at 4.15 PPP dollars and Western Europe at 3.01 PPP dollars.

1.677 billion people living in lower-middle-income countries cannot afford a heathy diet, and the same holds for 503 million people living in low-income countries. Combined, these account for 77 percent of people unable to afford healthy diets.

People who cannot afford the least-cost healthy diet in their countries are likely facing at least some degree of food and nutritional insecurity and thus face the risk of swelling the ranks of the hungry as measured in SOFI’s traditional measures of chronic hunger as well as chronic conditions such as stunting and wasting.

FAO’s ongoing foray into gauging and tracking the cost of affordable diets offers an early warning indicator of sorts. As the alarm is greatest where countries’ fiscal capacities are weakest, and where the cost burden perpetuate itself by dragging down economic growth, the data in SOFI 2024 highlight the need for greater and more innovative investments in agrifood systems, the topic of the second section of the flagship report.