Foreign Policy had a very interesting article by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo back in April 2011 on world poverty. It highlights the problems in economics of abstracting too much from reality when studying policy problems and ending up advocating ineffective solutions. The following quote sums up the issue well:
What we've found is that the story of hunger, and of poverty more broadly, is far more complex than any one statistic or grand theory; it is a world where those without enough to eat may save up to buy a TV instead, where more money doesn't necessarily translate into more food, and where making rice cheaper can sometimes even lead people to buy less rice.
And as a disclaimer in case of misinterpretation, Banerjee and Duflo point out that:
NONE OF THIS IS TO SAY that the logic of the hunger-based poverty trap is flawed. The idea that better nutrition would propel someone on the path to prosperity was almost surely very important at some point in history, and it may still be today.
A somewhat less relevant piece of information that stands out - because I have been tracking the nutrient and cost of my own diet for the past few months:
Using price data from the Philippines, we calculated the cost of the cheapest diet sufficient to give 2,400 calories. It would cost only about 21 cents a day, very affordable even for the very poor (the worldwide poverty line is set at roughly a dollar per day). The catch is, it would involve eating only bananas and eggs, something no one would like to do day in, day out.
From Banerjee and Duflo’s calculations, you can live on $0.21 a day on banana and eggs if you live in the Philippines. However, if I take up this diet in the US, is it healthy and cost effective given that the relative cost of goods are different in the US than in the Philippines?
The nutrition data for bananas and eggs from SELF’s website:
| Calories | Total Fat (%) | Saturated Fat (%) | Cholesterol (%) | Sodium (%) | Carbohydrate (%) | Dietary fiber (%) | Protein (g) | |
| Banana [1 medium (7” to 7-7/8” long) (118g)] | 105 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 12 | 1 |
| Egg [1 large (50g)] | 71 | 8 | 8 | 70 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
The units above (except for calories and protein) are in percentages of a 2,000-calorie diet for healthy adults recommended by the Food and Drug Administration. Given the high cholesterol count, two eggs a day is probably the limit. Filling out the rest of the calories requirement with banana:
| Calories | Total Fat (%) | Saturated Fat (%) | Cholesterol (%) | Sodium (%) | Carbohydrate (%) | Dietary fiber (%) | Protein (g) | |
| 18 Bananas | 1890 | 18 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 162 | 216 | 18 |
| 2 Eggs | 142 | 16 | 16 | 140 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 12 |
| Total | 2032 | 34 | 34 | 140 | 6 | 162 | 216 | 30 |
In terms of cost, a dozen eggs in the grocery store is about $1.50. I have seen bananas for $0.39 a pound. Thus the total cost of the diet a day is: $1.82 for bananas ($0.39*(118g*18bananas/453.59237(g/lb))) and $0.25 for eggs ($1.5/12eggs*2eggs) for a total of $2.07 a day. Both the carbohydrate and cholesterol is rather high, but the diet is very high in fiber and very low in fat.
Reference: More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World [Foreign Policy],
Nutrition facts and analysis for bananas, raw [SELF Nutrition Data],
Nutrition facts and analysis for egg, wohle, raw, fresh [SELF Nutrition Data],