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Measuring the cost of dietary diversity: novel price indexes to monitor access to nutritious diets

Year of publication 2017

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 7

Author Masters, W.

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Book (stand-alone)

Series number No. 20, November 2017

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) This technical note describes a novel approach to measuring changes in the affordability of nutritious diets in low-income settings, using price indexes to monitor how trade policy or market infrastructure and other factors influence the cost of reaching a standard threshold of dietary diversity. We provide preliminary results for a new Cost of Diet Diversity (CoDD) price index in Ghana, contrasted with existing Cost of Nutrient Adequacy indexes as well as the standard Consumer Price Index concept for foods actually consumed, and world food price indexes for commodities that enter international trade.

Language English

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    The African Commission on Agricultural Statistics (AFCAS) is a Statutory Body of FAO and meets every two years. AFCAS brings together senior statistics officials from FAO member countries of the African continent, who are responsible for the development of agricultural statistics in their respective countries. They review and exchange ideas on the state of food and agricultural statistics in the continent and advise member countries on the development of their agricultural statistical systems within FAO's Programme of Work and Budget for Africa.
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    The cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) and the affordability indicators – namely the prevalence (PUA) and the number (NUA) of people unable to afford a healthy diet – measure economic access to adequate food aligned with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) definition of food security. This paper describes and validates methods to compute the cost of a healthy diet in the gap years between the International Comparison Program (ICP) publication cycles using food inflation, or general inflation if food inflation data are not available. It also shows that adjusting energy requirements based on different demographics leads to minor changes in cost (less than 3 percent) and requires extra computational and data inputs while complicating the meaning of the indicator, and therefore is not recommended. Inflation data provide unbiased estimates at the global, regional and income group level for the short term, but this method may not capture accurate diet cost changes at the individual country or territory level. Higher frequency retail price data at the food item level are needed for more accurate and timely monitoring at the country or territory level.
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