The future of food demand: Evidence from a global meta-analysis and trend projections

By Maxime Roche, Andrew Comstock, and Olivier EckerJanuary 9, 2026

Understanding how food demand responds to income and price changes is essential for anticipating global food needs and expected consumption patterns, and for designing effective food policies. Two key parameters for this are the income elasticity of demand—the percent change in consumption in response to a percent change in people’s income; and the price elasticity of demand—the percent change in consumption in response to a percent food price change. These are essential inputs in a wide range of economic models.

Context-specific food demand elasticity estimates are not always available, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, due to data and capacity limitations. In these settings, researchers and policy analysts often must resort to standardized reference values, such as meta-estimates derived from the combined results of many studies in other countries. However, rigorously estimated meta-elasticities are also rare, often outdated, and mostly food group- or region-specific—rather than being comprehensive.

A new IFPRI Discussion Paper presents our analysis to address this data and knowledge gap. We conducted a global systematic literature review of empirical food demand estimation studies, compiling the most comprehensive global database to date of such estimates, the Food Demand Meta-Elasticity (FDME) database, and identified socioeconomic factors behind heterogeneity in the estimates.