In the 2020 edition of this report, the analysis showed that roughly 19 million people (or 18 percent of the population) of the 14 countries in the ECA region that are not part of the European Union and for which data were available could not afford a healthy diet in 2017. Globally, almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020 (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2022).
Estimates in this report are updated for 2020 in the ECA region, and revisions to the data series on the cost and affordability of a healthy diet this year include updates to account for new income distributions, revised average percentages of incomes that can be credibly reserved for food, and methodological refinements in data on the costs of diets that are more robust and that provide greater transparency (see FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2022 for details).
The sharp increase in consumer food prices from the second quarter of 2020 translated into an increased average cost of a healthy diet in 2020 for almost all subregions in Europe and Central Asia (Figure 20). At the regional level, the average cost of a healthy diet in 2020 was USD 3.14 per person per day, which is a 3.3 percent increase from 2019 and a 6.2 percent increase from 2017 (Table A-14). On average, a healthy diet cost less in the ECA region than in the world (USD 3.54) in 2020, with the cost in the ECA region increasing at a rate similar to the world average from 2019 and at a slightly slower rate from 2017.
From 2019 to 2020, the EFTA countries and Central Asia had the highest increase in the cost of a healthy diet, 4.8 percent and 4 percent, respectively, followed by the EU27 and the United Kingdom (3.8 percent). In 2020, the Western Balkans had the highest cost of a healthy diet (USD 3.87) in the region, 23.4 percent higher than the ECA average and 9.5 percent higher than the world average. From 2019 to 2020, the increase in the cost of a healthy diet in the Western Balkans was lower (1.7 percent) than the average increases in the region and the world.
The affordability of a healthy diet refers to the cost of a diet relative to income; therefore, changes over time can be the result of changes in diet costs, incomes or both. In 2020, measures put in place to contain COVID-19 sent the world and most countries in the region into economic recession, with many countries facing both declined incomes and increased food prices. However, while affordability estimates in 2020 reflect food price shocks, the income shocks are not yet captured due to the unavailability of 2020 income distribution data.
The ECA region in 2020 had 30.4 million people who could not afford a healthy diet (Table A-13). This is roughly 900 000 more people than in 2019. Central Asia (500 000) and CIS Europe and Ukraine (600 000) account for the highest increases. Due to the lack of key data on Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, it is likely that the number of people who cannot afford a healthy diet in Central Asia is currently underestimated, especially considering that Uzbekistan reports the highest moderate and severe food insecurity in the subregion.
Figure 21 presents the percentage of people unable to afford a healthy diet by subregion and by country in Europe and Central Asia. In 2020, roughly 3.6 percent of people in the ECA region were unable to afford a healthy diet, increased from 2.7 percent in 2019. The affordability of a healthy diet in the ECA region is much better than the global average estimates of 42.0 percent.
Within the ECA region, there were large variations in the unaffordability of a healthy diet in 2020. By subregion, Central Asia had the highest unaffordability (21.5 percent) in 2020. As data on cost and affordability are not available for two key countries of this subregion (Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), the percentage of people who cannot afford a healthy diet is likely to be underestimated. The second highest unaffordability is found in the Western Balkans (14.6 percent), followed by the Caucasus (9.7 percent). In contrast, EFTA countries and the EU27 and the United Kingdom had very low unaffordability in 2020 – 0.16 percent and 1.37 percent, respectively.
Three of the study countries had a very high percentage of the population unable to afford a healthy diet: Kyrgyzstan (49.6 percent, higher than the world average of 42 percent), Armenia (42.9 percent, higher than the world average) and Tajikistan (42.1 percent, equal to the world average). However, there are 23 ECA countries (50 percent of the countries in the study) that had less than 1 percent of the population unable to afford a healthy diet in 2020.
The following countries, which had unaffordability rates of more than 5 percent and saw relative increases from 2019 to 2020, may have suffered more from the COVID-19 pandemic: the Republic of Moldova (16.0 percent increase), Kyrgyzstan (9.5 percent increase), Romania (6.4 percent increase), Bulgaria (6.3 percent increase) and North Macedonia (3.0 percent increase).