Assessing the Affordability of Nutrient-Adequate Diets

TL;DR

This study evaluates the affordability of nutrient-adequate diets for households in Malawi, revealing limited household capacity to meet nutritional needs through cost-effective diets and highlighting the importance of food availability and policy implications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to assess household-level diet affordability by establishing bounds and analyzing the impact of shared versus individualized diets using survey data.

Findings

Only 20-38% of households can afford the diets at the bounds.

Individualized diets are more feasible and less seasonal.

Shared diets require more nutrient-dense, costly foods.

Abstract

The cost and affordability of least-cost healthy diets by time and place are increasingly used as a proxy for access to nutrient-adequate diets. Recent work has focused on the nutrient requirements of individuals, although most food and anti-poverty programs target whole households. This raises the question of how the cost of a nutrient-adequate diet can be measured for an entire household. This study identifies upper and lower bounds on the feasibility, cost, and affordability of meeting all household members' nutrient requirements using 2013-2017 survey data from Malawi. Findings show only a minority of households can afford the nutrient-adequate diet at either bound, with 20% of households able to afford the (upper bound) shared diets and 38% the individualized (lower bound) diets. Individualized diets are more frequently feasible with locally available foods (90% vs. 60% of the time) and exhibit more moderate seasonal fluctuation. To meet all members' needs, a shared diet requires a more nutrient-dense combination of foods that is more costly and exhibits more seasonality in diet cost than any one food group or the individualized diets. The findings further help adjudicate the extent to which nutritional behavioral change programs versus broader agricultural and food policies can be relied upon to improve individual access to healthy diets.