NEAR EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2024: Statistics and trends

The cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) indicator provides national-level estimates of the cost of acquiring the cheapest possible healthy diet in a country, defined as a diet comprising a variety of locally available foods that meet energy and nutritional requirements (see Annex II: Indicators definitions). In this report, new food price data and methodological improvements have resulted in updated cost estimates and more accurate estimates of the affordability of a healthy diet, leading to a revision of the entire series of both sets of indicators up to 2022 (See The State of Food Security and Nutrition 2024, page 23 and Supplementary material to its Chapter 2).

The cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) in the Arab States was 3.77 PPP (purchasing power parity) dollars per person per day in 2022, up by 6.8 percent from the year before and only 0.19 PPP dollars below the global average (Figure 17, Table 8). Lower-middle-income countries had the highest cost of a healthy diet in 2022, which was 4.48 PPP dollars. The subgroup with the lowest cost was the group of countries affected by conflict, at 2.95 PPP dollars; on an income level, high-income countries had the lowest cost, with 3.24 PPP dollars. The CoHD in Arab States increased by 6.8 percent between 2021 and 2022 (3.53 PPP dollars to 3.77 PPP dollars), which was lower than the world increase of 11.2 percent for the same period (3.56 PPP dollars to 3.96 PPP dollars). The subgroup which experienced the largest increase between 2021 and 2022 was the lower-middle-income countries group, which increased from 3.85 PPP dollars to 4.48 PPP dollars (16.4 percent increase). The only subgroup which did not see a significant change between 2017 and 2022 was the group of countries affected by conflict, which sat at 2.95 PPP dollars in both years. High-income countries have traditionally had the lowest CoHD on average, which was the case until 2021, when they began to experience higher costs (2.93 PPP dollars in high-income countries to 2.89 PPP dollars in countries affected by conflict).

In 2022, 151.3 million people in the Arab States could not afford a healthy diet, corresponding to 32.6 percent of the region’s population, which is slightly lower than the global average of 35.4 percent (Figure 18, Table A-13). There is a significant decrease in the proportion and number of the population unable to afford a healthy diet between 2020 and 2021, falling from 35.6 percent (159.9 million people) to 32.8 percent (149.7 million people). This might be, at least partly, attributed to the expansion of access to social protection in the COVID-19 pandemic response across the region (ILO, 2021).

In 2022, 2.8 billion people were unable to afford a healthy diet in the world, of which 151.3 million resided in the Arab States, representing 5.4 percent of the global population (Table A-13). The subgroup with the highest share of its population unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022 was the group of countries affected by conflict, with 41.2 percent, while countries not affected by conflict had the lowest share (28.5 percent).

The number of people in the Arab region unable to afford a healthy diet fell by almost 10 million between 2020 and 2021, before increasing by around 1.5 million in 2022. The declining trend is driven mainly by the Arab States LDCs. The data indicate that, despite the increases in costs of healthy diets since 2018 (Figure 17), the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet in the region is improving. Despite this improvement, recent regional shocks caused by the war in Ukraine and the recent Red Sea crisis could in the future undermine this current amelioration by increasing food import costs.