Speaker
Description
Access to a healthy diet is a fundamental human right, yet a significant portion of the global population faces barriers to realizing this right. Conventional poverty metrics are designed to adequately capture caloric needs but they are inadequate for capturing other essential nutritional requirements. We propose national poverty lines based on the cost of a healthy diet and explore their key metrics such as headcount ratios and the poverty gap. According to these poverty lines 2,840 million people were poor in 2019 and US$ 2,293 billion per year would be needed to lift them out of poverty. This is in contrast to 648 million people who are considered to live in extreme poverty according to the World Bank’s conventional poverty lines. In this paper, we propose a measure of poverty that is grounded in the economic costs of maintaining a healthy diet. Healthy diets are and always have been a basic need and current poverty measures based on caloric sufficiency do not meet this need. As the world moves closer to eliminating extreme poverty, the traditional threshold of US$ 2.15 will become increasingly socially irrelevant in many parts of the world. An expansion to affordability of healthy diets enables individuals to sustain long-term health. Our approach offers a dynamic and adaptable internationally consistent way of assessing poverty, distinct from conventional approaches that often rely on subjective country-specific judgments. We introduce these thresholds as absolute poverty lines in nations with lower incomes, while they encompass a relative dimension in wealthier countries. This leads to a denser distribution of poverty lines compared to current national poverty lines, wherein lower-income countries have higher poverty thresholds while higher-income countries have lower.
The affordability of adequate, let alone healthy, diets is a distant reality for many people worldwide. This new measurement of poverty indicates that 2.9 billion people were living in poverty in 2021 indicating a poverty rate of 39 percent. More than one out of three people globally were not able to afford healthy diets and other essential goods. To overcome this gap, individuals are lacking about US$ 2.4 trillion annually. Our findings underscore significant global differences in the affordability of nutritious diets. Particularly in the Global South, people face considerable financial barriers to achieving recommended nutrient intake, thereby impeding their ability to sustain long-term health and well-being. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are in particular need of support considering their high burden relative to their GDP. We need to transform food systems to provide equitable access to healthy and sustainable diets for everyone. The global income gap to afford a healthy diet is substantial but manageable. To provide perspective on this figure, the income gap in 2021 amounts to 1.2 to 2.2 percent of the world's total annual income or 0.8 to 1.6 percent of the combined wealth of all millionaires and billionaires worldwide, depending on the scenario. Despite the sizable global income gap to a healthy diet, it is important to also consider the costs that result from suboptimal diets through factors such as healthcare costs, reduced productivity, lower educational attainment, and increased mortality rates. For instance, the global cost of diabetes, to which unhealthy diets contribute, is estimated at US$ 1.3 trillion in 2015 and may increase to US$ 2.2 trillion by 2030. It is projected that the annual health costs associated with non-communicable diseases and diet-related mortality will amount to more than US$ 1.3 trillion by 2030 and US$ 2.2 trillion by 2050, excluding the adverse impacts of undernutrition. Economic losses attributable to undernutrition are estimated at US$ 3.5 trillion annually. The economic benefits of improving diets have been estimated at US$ 1 to 31 trillion which may substantially exceed the annual global price of a healthy diet. In conclusion, despite the substantial global income gap, the potential economic benefits resulting from ensuring affordable access to healthy diets may surpass it considerably. Consideration of cost avoidance is therefore imperative when making investments to enhance the universal affordability of a nutritious diet. A striking disparity emerges when we compare key metrics of our poverty lines with those based on the conventional US$ 2.15 IPL and national poverty lines. The number of individuals classified as poor increases by 4.5 and 2.5 times, respectively. The income gap surges by 17 and 4 times, respectively. This highlights that neither the conventional IPL nor national poverty lines adequately capture the extent to which people worldwide struggle to afford nutritious foods. It underscores the substantial obstacles that individuals continue to face in accessing nutritious diets, even if they are not classified as extremely poor by conventional standards. It becomes clear that the current poverty line falls short in addressing the economic accessibility of obtaining nutritious food to meet the dietary requirements for a healthy and active life.
We argue that the understanding of basic needs has developed with economic progress and the reduction in global hunger rates since the development of initial national poverty lines. Standard poverty lines fall short in considering the nutritional requirements essential for individuals to lead active and healthy lives, a pivotal element of food security, and therefore substantially underestimates those who cannot afford to live and active and healthy life. Access to healthy diets is a fundamental human right, and sufficient calorie intake alone leads to poor health in the long run. Poverty lines need to be expanded to encompass economic access to healthy diets to ensure sustainable long-term health.
