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Number of people that cannot afford a healthy diet

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Food PricesPoverty

What you should know about this indicator

  • A healthy diet meets nutritional standards set by dietary guidelines, with sufficient diversity and quantity within and between food groups to achieve nutrient adequacy and protect against diet-related diseases.
  • This indicator is calculated as the percentage of a country's population that is unable to afford a healthy diet, multiplied by the country's population.
  • Population counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship.
  • A value of zero indicates a null or a small number rounded down at the current precision level.
Number of people that cannot afford a healthy diet
Total number of people who cannot afford a healthy diet in a given country and year.
Source
FAO and World Bank (2024), using data and methods from Bai et al. (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
September 9, 2024
Next expected update
September 2025
Date range
2017–2022
Unit
people

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Food Prices for Nutrition provides indicators on the cost and affordability of healthy diets in each country, showing the population's physical and economic access to sufficient quantities of locally available items for an active and healthy life. It also provides indicators on the cost and affordability of an energy-sufficient diet and of a nutrient-adequate diet. These indicators are explained in detail in the Food Prices for Nutrition DataHub.

Version 3.0, estimated in July 2024, uses the 2021 global food retail price data from the International Comparison Program (ICP) and updates the methodology of calculating the affordability indicators, including indicators measuring the ratio between diet costs and international food poverty lines and indicators measuring the share and volume of the population unable to afford each diet, and they are based on the latest Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) data expressed in 2017 purchasing power parity dollars (PPP).

Estimates for the prevalence and number of people unable to afford a healthy diet were imputed for countries with missing information based on their regional and global aggregates. Countries' income classifications at the aggregate reporting level follow the calendar year of 2022 standard (the fiscal year of 2024 of the World Bank).

Population data are sourced from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects and World Development Indicators (WDI) of the World Bank. The WDI source data from:

  • The United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: 2022 Revision.
  • Census reports and other statistical publications from national statistical offices.
  • Eurostat: Demographic Statistics.
  • United Nations Statistical Division. Population and Vital Statistics Report (various years).
  • U.S. Census Bureau: International Database.
  • Secretariat of the Pacific Community: Statistics and Demography Programme.
Retrieved on
September 9, 2024
Retrieved from
https://databank.worldbank.org/source/food-prices-for-nutrition
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Number of people that cannot afford a healthy diet”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) - “Food Prices”. Data adapted from Herforth et al. (2022), adapted by World Bank. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-healthy-diet-unaffordable [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

FAO and World Bank (2024), using data and methods from Bai et al. (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

FAO and World Bank (2024), using data and methods from Bai et al. (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Number of people that cannot afford a healthy diet” [dataset]. Herforth et al. (2022), adapted by World Bank, “Food Prices for Nutrition 3.0” [original data]. Retrieved November 20, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-healthy-diet-unaffordable