Around two billion people worldwide suffer from moderate to severe food insecurity and a lack of micronutrients. In contrast, 654 million people are categorised as extremely poor according to the World Bank’s International Poverty Line (IPL) at USD 2.15 per day. Current poverty measurements overlook a crucial aspect of human well-being: adequate nutrition. A research team from the University of Göttingen, together with Misereor, has developed a new method for measuring poverty. It shows whether people can afford a healthy diet alongside other basic needs.
Göttingen/Germany, April 7, 2025. According to these standards, between 2.3 and 2.9 billion people worldwide were living in poverty in 2022. The results of the study were published in the journal Food Policy.
The researchers compared the cost of a healthy basic diet – based on nutritional guidelines – with consumption data from 145 countries to remeasure global poverty. While according to the World Bank, two-thirds of people classified as poor live in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the proposed method for assessing poverty, more than a third are in South Asia, closely followed by sub-Saharan Africa.
Furthermore, other regions account for only seven per cent of global poverty by conventional standards, but between 29 and 35 per cent according to the new approach, with East Asia and the Pacific alone accounting for 10 to 19 per cent of the world’s poor.
„Billions of people are not categorised as extremely poor by today’s standards, but cannot afford food for adequate nutrition and other basic needs. As a result, the health consequences of malnutrition fall into the background,“ explains Jonas Stehl, PhD student in the Development Economics research group at the University of Göttingen and lead author of the study. ‘In order to achieve a more targeted use of resources, it could help if the World Bank rethinks its approach to measuring poverty.’
Original publication:
Jonas Stehl, Lutz Depenbusch, Sebastian Vollmer. „Global poverty and the cost of a healthy diet.” Food Policy (2025). DOI: (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102849)
ImageSource
Adaptiert nach Stehl, J. et al., Food Policy, DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102849; lizensiert nach CC BY 4., Darstellung des Anteils der Menschen, die in jedem Land nach der in der Studie vorgestellten Metrik als arm gelten.