This document summarizes Derek Headey's presentation on recent research at the micro, meso, and macro levels on food prices, diet costs, and diet affordability through a nutrition lens. At the micro level, the research finds that using a healthy diet as the poverty line doubles estimated poverty rates. Social protection interventions need to be larger to close nutrition gaps. At the meso level, research is growing on how weak food environments impact demand and malnutrition. At the macro level, methods to measure healthy diet affordability need refinement, and multisectoral solutions are needed to help the billions unable to afford healthy diets.

1. Frontiers of research on prices,
diet costs & diet affordability
Derek Headey
Senior Research Fellow
Development Strategies & Governance
International Food Policy Research Institute
Washington DC | July 15th, 2022
https://sites.tufts.edu/foodpricesfornutrition

2. How can the mass availability of retail food prices data
answer policy questions that really matter?
Peculiar that “food prices for nutrition” research is new, but it is…
Micro:
o Economists study food demand & food poverty, but not through a nutrition lens
o Nutritionists focused on food choice, less so “choice under scarcity”
Meso:
o Ag economists focused on farmgate prices & value chains, but consumers
engagement with physical markets is poorly studied
Macro:
o Simulation models not said much on interventions, prices & cost of healthy diets
Will use micro-meso-macro to talk about recent findings & new frontiers

3. Micro: Food Poverty in a Nutrition Lens
 Pricing affordability of a healthy diet is like measuring
food poverty but with no preferences
 Standard poverty measurement uses preferences but
for an energy-based food poverty line
 Mahrt et al. (2022) argue:
o A healthy diet is a basic need
o Good methods for incorporating preferences
o Energy-based poverty lines result in non-poor
households with multiple micronutrient deficiencies
o In Myanmar, a healthy diet food poverty line leads
to a doubling of the estimated poverty rate
 Future research: repeat, globally and locally
20%
8%
24%
48%
27%
56%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
National Urban Rural
Poverty Rates (%) in Myanmar:
Energy-based vs healthy diet poverty lines
When nutrition is a basic need, the world is poorer than we think!

4. Micro: Food Demand & Social Protection through a nutrition lens
o Model household demand for healthy diet food
groups & translate this into micronutrient gaps
o Model shock (C19) impacts & social protection
 Key findings from various countries
o Healthy food consumption gaps are huge
o Poverty constraints huge: incomes<healthy diets
o Price constraints: fruits, veg, ASFs expensive
o Preferences: weak demand for pulses & veg
+ Protection constraints: typical transfers ($13)
don’t close healthy food gaps or micronutrient gaps
o Fortification a good idea, especially during shocks
-53%
-51% -50% -49%
-19%
-60%
-50%
-40%
-30%
-20%
-10%
0%
No transfer Cash
Unfortified
rice transfer
Food
voucher
Fortified
rice
Bangladesh: mean micronutrient gaps with
$13/month social protection interventions
When nutrition is a basic need, we need bigger & better social protection

5. Meso: Food markets/environments through a Nutrition Lens
More on supermarkets in LMICs than the markets poor people use!
But in rural Ethiopia we found that poor people live with poor markets
 weak infrastructure, limited diversity, seasonality, high relative prices
Urban food environment studies in LMICs face more complexity:
 Quality & price differences across different kinds of vendors
 Greater access to unhealthy foods & exposure to marketing
Meso-level research is growing quickly, including in the One CGIAR:
 Do weak food environments cause weak food demand, or vice versa?
 How do food environments influence the double burden of malnutrition?
 Can integrated, multi-faceted interventions improve local food systems?
 How can we regularize & standardize market quality measurement?
Missing middle problem: still don’t know the scope for meso policy levers
3
12
13
25
29
0 10 20 30
Pulses/nuts
Dairy
Fruits/veg
Flesh foods
Eggs
Caloric cost of each food
group relative to staple foods

6. Macro: Measuring & modelling the affordability of healthy diets
 Many gaps at the macro level, on methodological & policy questions
METHODS QUESTIONS
 “Billions” of people cannot afford a healthy diet (Hirvonen et al. 2019, Herforth et al. 2020)
 But this strand of work is new & needs refinement & robustness:
o Food price surveys vary in quality: too food foods bias diet costs upwards
o Huge demographic differences across countries: India has 110 million children <5 years
o Global estimates of healthy diet unaffordabiltiy rely on national World Bank poverty data,
but this is not yet refined at the rural and urban levels
o Rural-urban breakdowns hugely important for targeting social protection
o Measuring affordability for farmers is complicated when they eat what they produce
Methods don’t change the message … but could better inform targeting of
resources across and within countries

7. Macro: Measuring & modelling the affordability of healthy diets
POLICY QUESTIONS
 The 3 billion people question: How to help the masses that can’t afford a healthy diet?
 Reality check: population growth, higher food prices, c19, climate change: 4 billion soon?
 Economic growth will take decades to close healthy food gaps, even if accelerated
o Can we nudge the growing middle class in LMICs towards healthier diets?
 Social protection? Currently inadequate for the 1.5 billion $1.90/day poor …
o How can we scale up protection & maximize its nutritional impacts?
 Food policies? Scope to reduce the real cost of healthy diets?
o Healthy foods often perishable => prices influenced by local supply
o Scope to reduce prices by investing in perishable non-staples? (eggs)
A multisectoral problem needing multisectoral solutions

8. Take-aways…
o Micro
o Monitor food affordability, but integrate healthy diets into poverty measures
o Analyze food demand through a nutrition lens
o Meso
o Focus on food environments not just in urban areas, but in rural markets
o Standardize, regularize and broaden the monitoring of food environments in price
surveys, but also household surveys like LSMS, DHS, WFP surveys
o Macro
o Model income, price & preference effects on healthy diet convergence
o More modelling on social protection: impacts on diets, but also fiscal effects
o More modelling on agriculture interventions to reduce the cost of healthy diets

9. Thank you!
Some studies referred to:
 Mahrt, K., Herforth, A., Robinson, S., Arndt, C., Headey, D., 2022. Nutrition as a Basic Need: A new method
for utility-consistent and nutritionally adequate food poverty lines IFPRI Discussion Paper 2120.
 Headey, D.D., Alderman, H.H., 2019. The Relative Caloric Prices of Healthy and Unhealthy Foods Differ
Systematically across Income Levels and Continents. The Journal of Nutrition 149, 2020-2033.
 Headey, D., Hirvonen, K., Hoddinott, J., Stifel, D., 2019. Rural Food Markets and Child Nutrition. American
Journal of Agricultural Economics 101, 1311-1327.
 Ecker, Olivier, Harold Alderman, Andrew R. Comstock, Derek D. Headey, Kristi Mahrt, and Angga Pradesha.
2022. Mitigating Poverty and Undernutrition through Social Protection: A Simulation Analysis of the
COVID-19 Pandemic in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Forthcoming IFPRI discussion paper
 Hirvonen, Kalle, Harold Alderman, Derek Headey. 2022. Catalyzing convergence towards sustainable and
healthy diets in the 21st Century. Forthcoming IFPRI discussion paper
 Morris, S.S., Beesabathuni, K., Headey, D., 2018. An egg for everyone: Pathways to universal access to one of
nature's most nutritious foods. Maternal & Child Nutrition 14, e12679.