SCIENTISTS PROJECT FOOD COSTS TO CONSUME HALF OF POOREST PEOPLE'S INCOME BY 2050

Research published in Earth's Future projects that millions of the world's poorest people could spend approximately half their income on food by 2050, according to a study led by energy researcher Jennifer Morris from MIT. The analysis modelled nearly 4,000 hypothetical scenarios using the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) to assess future resource security across energy, water, land and socioeconomic factors. The findings suggest that lower-income groups face substantially worse potential insecurity compared with higher-income populations across the scenarios examined.

The study assessed resource access and control across 32 geopolitical regions, with populations within each region divided into 10 income subgroups. According to median results across the 3,735 feasible scenarios, regions in Africa and India are projected to experience the highest food burden. Morris noted that when expenditure on food consumes half of household income, "it leaves so few resources for the other critical needs and basic life necessities," potentially destabilising entire lives. The researchers emphasised that most existing analyses examine single resource topics in isolation, whereas their model assesses how food, energy and water security interact as populations grow and pressure on global resources intensifies.

The projections highlight how income distribution will shape future resource security outcomes. The modelling approach accounts for how energy, water, land systems and socioeconomic conditions co-evolve in response to various sources of uncertainty. The study's authors did not specify which policy interventions or adaptations might mitigate the projected outcomes, leaving questions about potential responses to these projections unanswered at this stage.