Economic growth, convergence, and world food demand and supply - paper analysis

Jul 19, 2026

Developing countries have been expanding faster than industrial economies, and this income-driven convergence has major implications for global food demand and agriculture. As diets shift from starchy staples toward animal-based foods, production costs rise substantially, so food demand responds strongly to per-capita income growth. Using a resource-based approach to food production and consumption, the analysis finds per-capita demand growth to be a more decisive driver than population growth through 2050. Under a Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenario with continued convergence, food demand rises by 102%, exceeding a counterfactual of uniform growth (78%), while supply growth lags, exerting upward pressure on world food prices.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

Introduction

Population growth versus per-capita income

Engel’s and Bennett’s law and dietary change

Income distribution and convergence

Theories and evidence on income convergence

Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Economic growth, convergence, and world food demand and supply Emiko Fukase a, ⇑, Will Martin b a World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington DC 20433, USA b International Food Policy Research Institute, 1201 I St NW, Washington DC 20005-3915, USA | a r t i c l e i n f o | | a b s t r a c t | | --- | --- | --- | | Article history:<br>Accepted 19 March 2020<br>Available online 8 April 2020 | | In recent years, developing countries have been growing much more rapidly than the industrial countries. This growth convergence has potentially very important implications for world food demand and for world agriculture because of the increase in demand for agricultural resources as diets shift away from starchy staples and towards animal-based products and fruits and vegetables. Using a resource-based measure of food production and consumption that accounts for the much higher production costs associated with animal-based foods, this article ﬁnds per capita demand growth to be a more important driver of food demand than population growth between now and 2050. Using the middle-ground Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenario to 2050 from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, which assumes continued income convergence, the article ﬁnds that the increase in food demand (102 percent) would be about a third greater than under a hypothetical scenario of all countries growing atthe same rate (78 percent). As convergence increases the growth of food supply by less than demand, it appears to be a driver of upward pressure on world food prices.<br>􀀁 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY IGO license.([http://crea](http://crea)[tivecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/](tivecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/)). | | Keywords:<br>Cereal equivalents Convergence Dietary patterns Income growth Food security Global food demand | | | 1. Introduction The projected increase in world population from 7.4 billion in 2017 to 9.7 billion in 2050 (United Nations, 2019) has received a great deal of attention as an inﬂuence on world demand for food. However, as the rate of global population growth slows, growth in food consumption per person resulting from growth in per capita income is becoming an increasingly important driver of food demand. Engel’s law points to a declining share of food in total expenditures as incomes grow, while Bennett’s law points to an increase in spending on fruits and vegetables and animal-based products as incomes grow in developing countries (Godfray, 2011). The shift towards animal-based products puts pressure on agricultural resources since they require disproportionately more agricultural resources in production (Rask & Rask, 2011). This relationship between food demand and income, summarized by Engel’s and Bennett’s laws, implies that income distribution matters for aggregate food demand (Cirera & Masset, 2010). Cirera and Masset (2010) also point out that—since most of global inequality is between rather than within countries—changes in the between-country income distribution are likely to have greater impacts on world food demand than changes in within-country ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [efukase@worldbank.org](efukase@worldbank.org) (E. Fukase), [w.martin@cgiar.org](w.martin@cgiar.org) (W. Martin). distributions. Thus, in projecting long-run food demand changes, income convergence—where income per person has been growing more quickly in low-and middle-income countries than in highincome countries—has potentially important impacts on overall demand for food. This question of convergence, and its consequences for the distribution of income, has received considerable attention from macroeconomists, but its potential implications for food demand appear not to have been explicitly analyzed. Neoclassical growth theory predicts that the differences in per capita incomes across countries conv

FAQs

Why does income convergence affect global food demand?

Because convergence raises per-capita income faster in low- and middle-income countries, shifting diets away from starchy staples toward animal-based products and fruits/vegetables. This increases demand for agricultural resources and changes consumption patterns.

What drives food demand growth through 2050 according to the article?

Per-capita demand growth is found to be more important than population growth between now and 2050.

How do demand and supply respond under a convergence scenario?

As convergence increases, food supply growth increases by less than demand, leading to upward pressure on world food prices.

Jul 19, 2026

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