Pakistan, India and Bangladesh are poor countries. The poorest in the country cannot afford food for sustenance, much less healthy food. But even in that, Pakistan’s poorest are by far poorer than the poorest of India and Bangladesh.

The graph shows the affordability of the least-cost healthy diet in each country. Affordability is defined as the diet costs as a percentage of the food component of the international poverty line. According to World Bank, the international poverty line is taken as $0.99 per day in 2011. The Food Poverty Line reflects the cost of consuming 2,350 calories per adult equivalent per day.

The affordability indicator assumed a food budget of 52pc of household income per capita. So, for example, a family of five have Rs25,000 per month, a single person has Rs2,600 per month to meet his nutrition requirements of 2,350 calories per day.

Poverty levels in Pakistan are so high that the cost of a healthy diet is almost four times what is available. Since the latest data is for 2020, when 83.5pc of the population could not afford a healthy diet, post-pandemic and post-floods, the situation has become more alarming.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 31st, 2022