Cost and affordability of nutritious diets in Malawi and the role of cash transfers

Article on cost of the diet (CotD) analysis conducted in May 2022 to inform the design of the new Maziko – Maternal and Child Cash Grant pilot project. The aim of the CotD analysis was to estimate the minimum cost and affordability of a nutritious diet nationally, and for rural, urban, poor and ultra-poor populations in Malawi; identify trends in the past 12 months; and model effects of different cash transfer sizes on the affordability of nutritious diets. The CotD is a Save the Children method and software which uses linear programming, bringing four datasets together - food composition tables, individual nutritional specifications, and local food price data collected through market surveys - to calculate the best combination of foods needed in a specific context to meet households and individuals’ nutritional needs. It is also used to model and identify the best interventions to reduce the cost or affordability gap of a nutritious diet. For this study, we used existing World Food Programme's (WFP) Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB) monthly prices for 28 different food items between April 2021 and March 2022, collected from 77 markets in 25 districts. This data was imported into the CotD software to calculate the cost of different diets (energy only, meeting all nutritional needs etc). The cost of a nutritious diet (including essential non-food expenditure) was compared with per capita income from the Malawi Poverty Report published in August 2021, to estimate the affordability gap of a nutritious diet. The CotD modelling tool was then used to estimate the effects of different cash transfer interventions to reduce that gap.