A modelled estimate of food access within countries shows that inequality within countries has increased despite rising equality between countries

Abstract

Global food calorie supply per person is more than 2900 kcal per day on average, but we have failed to ensure equitable access to these calories. Yet how uneven food access is within countries has remained poorly understood, as has the progress made over the past five decades on closing the access gap. Using publicly available data, we developed a theoretically-grounded statistical model to estimate the cross-national relationship between average per capita expenditure and per capita food availability and used this to estimate within-country access to food for income deciles in 135 countries. We find that, from 1961 to 2013, despite between-country inequality declining by 48% (decline in Gini coefficient from 0.15 to 0.078), within-country inequality in food access increased by 25% for the countries in our study sample (Gini coefficient increased from 0.088 to 0.111). Furthermore, we find that the poorest 10% of the population in the majority of countries in South Asia, South East Asia and Africa—home to the majority of the world's food insecure—continue to access their calories primarily from staple foods and have extremely limited access to nutrient-dense foods, resulting in inequality in access to nutrient-dense foods that is even greater than inequality in access to total calories (within-country Gini coefficient of 0.2). These results strongly support continued investments in social safety nets targeted at the poorest half of the income distribution to swiftly reduce inequality in food access, and proactive programs that help vulnerable households build assets to sustain themselves through future food crises.