IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/agecon/v56y2025i3p360-372.html

Measuring Food Access as Affordability of Least‐Cost Healthy Diets Worldwide

Author

Listed:
  • William A. Masters
  • Jessica K. Wallingford
  • Anna W. Herforth
  • Yan Bai

Abstract

Since 2020, the World Bank, FAO, and others have measured a population's access to sufficient nutritious food for an active and healthy life using a new metric known as the Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diets (CoAHD). This new kind of data measures food access using market prices of the least expensive locally available items that would meet nutritional criteria adopted by national governments, as summarized in a Healthy Diet Basket (HDB) level of intake balanced among six complementary food groups: starchy staples, vegetables, fruits, fats and oils, animal source foods, and legumes, nuts and seeds. CoAHD reflects the definition of food security introduced during the World Food Summit of 1996, and complements the earlier measures of global food security notably Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) based on total national availability and intake distribution of calories, and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) based on survey data asking whether a household ran out of resources to acquire their usual diets. This paper briefly discusses the evolution of global food security measurement, then highlights updates to the methods used to compute CoAHD indicators and presents newly available CoAHD data obtained using this methodology and updated price data.

Suggested Citation

  • William A. Masters & Jessica K. Wallingford & Anna W. Herforth & Yan Bai, 2025. "Measuring Food Access as Affordability of Least‐Cost Healthy Diets Worldwide," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 56(3), pages 360-372, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:agecon:v:56:y:2025:i:3:p:360-372
    DOI: 10.1111/agec.70028
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.70028
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/agec.70028?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William A. Masters & Amelia B. Finaret & Steven A. Block, 2022. "The economics of malnutrition: Dietary transition and food system transformation," Papers 2202.02579, arXiv.org.
    2. Robert C. Allen, 2017. "Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3690-3721, December.
    3. Headey, Derek & Hirvonen, Kalle & Alderman, Harold, 2024. "Estimating the cost and affordability of healthy diets: How much do methods matter?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    4. William A Masters & Yan Bai & Anna Herforth & Daniel B Sarpong & Fulgence Mishili & Joyce Kinabo & Jennifer C Coates, 2018. "Measuring the Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Africa: Price Indexes for Diet Diversity and the Cost of Nutrient Adequacy," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(5), pages 1285-1301.
    5. Dean Jolliffe & Espen Beer Prydz, 2021. "Societal Poverty: A Relative and Relevant Measure," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 35(1), pages 180-206.
    6. Robert C. Allen, 2017. "Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire REVISED," Working Papers 20170005, New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised Jun 2017.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Masters, William A., 2025. "Tracking the affordability of least-cost healthy diets helps guide intervention for food security and improved nutrition," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stehl, Jonas & Depenbusch, Lutz & Vollmer, Sebastian, 2025. "Global poverty and the cost of a healthy diet," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    2. Ameye, Hannah & De Weerdt, Joachim & Gibson, John, 2021. "Measuring macro- and micronutrient consumption in multi-purpose surveys: Evidence from a survey experiment in Tanzania," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    3. Benoit Decerf, 2021. "Combining absolute and relative poverty: income poverty measurement with two poverty lines," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(2), pages 325-362, February.
    4. Decerf, Benoit, 2025. "On the properties of the two main types of global poverty lines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    5. Andrea Brandolini & John Micklewright, 2023. "Measuring global poverty," Chapters, in: Jacques Silber (ed.), Research Handbook on Measuring Poverty and Deprivation, chapter 6, pages 60-69, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Martin Ravallion, 2020. "On Measuring Global Poverty," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 167-188, August.
    7. Bai, Yan & Alemu, Robel & Block, Steven A. & Headey, Derek & Masters, William A., 2021. "Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices: Evidence from 177 countries," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    8. Headey, Derek & Bachewe, Fantu & Marshall, Quinn & Raghunathan, Kalyani & Mahrt, Kristi, 2024. "Food prices and the wages of the poor: A cost-effective addition to high-frequency food security monitoring," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    9. Bai, Yan & Costlow, Leah & Ebel, Alissa & Laves, Sarah & Ueda, Yurika & Volin, Natalie & Zamek, Maya & Herforth, Anna & Masters, William A., 2021. "Review: Retail consumer price data reveal gaps and opportunities to monitor food systems for nutrition," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    10. Decerf,Benoit Marie A & Ferrando,Mery & Quinn,Natalie N., 2021. "Global Income Poverty Measurement with Preference Heterogeneity : Theory and Application," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9844, The World Bank.
    11. Schneider, Kate R., 2022. "Nationally representative estimates of the cost of adequate diets, nutrient level drivers, and policy options for households in rural Malawi," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    12. Masters, William A., 2025. "Tracking the affordability of least-cost healthy diets helps guide intervention for food security and improved nutrition," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    13. Vincent Geloso & Peter Lindert, 2020. "Relative costs of living, for richer and poorer, 1688–1914," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 14(3), pages 417-442, September.
    14. Milan Zafirovski, 2022. "Some dilemmas of economic democracy: Indicators and empirical analysis," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(1), pages 252-302, February.
    15. Baki Güney Işıkara, 2021. "The Weight of Essentials in Economic Activity," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 53(1), pages 95-115, March.
    16. Piotr R. Paradowski & Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz, 2025. "Inequality, poverty, and child benefits: evidence from a natural experiment," Post-Soviet Affairs, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(3), pages 242-262, May.
    17. Yixia Cai & Timothy Smeeding, 2019. "Deep and Extreme Child Poverty in Rich and Poor Nations: Lessons from Atkinson for the Fight Against Child Poverty," LIS Working papers 780, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    18. Sédi-Anne Boukaka & Giulia Mancini & Giovanni Vecchi, 2021. "Poverty and inequality in Francophone Africa, 1960s–2010s," Economic History of Developing Regions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 1-29, January.
    19. Moaven Razavi & Collins Gaba & William Crown & Allyala Nandakumar, 2025. "Formulation and validation of a regional household wealth index for sub-Saharan Africa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 20(10), pages 1-14, October.
    20. Michael Dolislager & Lenis Saweda O. Liverpool‐Tasie & Nicole M. Mason & Thomas Reardon & David Tschirley, 2022. "Consumption of healthy and unhealthy foods by the African poor: Evidence from Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 53(6), pages 870-894, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:agecon:v:56:y:2025:i:3:p:360-372. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaaeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.