Rising food costs putting children’s futures at risk across the globe, World Vision warns
Rising food prices are putting the futures of millions of children around the world at risk, as families in many countries struggle to afford the basics, a new report from a leading Evangelical humanitarian organization has warned.
World Vision released its "Price Shocks 2026: The Affordability Crisis Moving Nutritious Diets Out of Reach" report last week, the fifth annual such survey. It compared the price of a basket of basic food with average wages in 62 countries, based on prices found at local markets for 10 common items, among them rice, flour, eggs, chicken and milk.
Researchers found that families, including some in the United States, were buying less food, turning to cheaper items with lower nutritional value, borrowing money or going hungry.
In the United States and other high-income countries, an hour’s wages covered the cost of simple, nutritious food. In the countries where food was least affordable, the same basket took days, or weeks, to buy. A worker in Ukraine needed more than 12 hours of pay, and an adult in Sudan had to work for 19 days.
Some 35.5 million children worldwide suffered acute malnutrition in 2025, nearly 10 million of them in its severe form, according to the report. Malnutrition can stunt a child’s physical and mental growth, weaken the immune system and raise the risk of death, with damage that can last into adulthood.
The findings were released last Friday on World Food Day, an annual occasion meant to raise awareness of hunger.
Margaret Schuler, World Vision’s senior vice president of international programs, said she had met mothers in communities hit by crises who have to decide every day which meal to skip and which of their children will eat.
“Children should not have to pay the price when nutritious food is out of reach,” Schuler said in a statement. “These findings underscore the urgency of ensuring families can afford the food their children need to grow, thrive and reach their full potential.”
World Vision urged governments, international institutions, businesses and donors to make affordable, healthy food for children a priority. The organization called for wider school meal programs, investment in local food production and jobs that can hold up during crises, and quick food aid to people uprooted or hit by fighting.
Hunger is getting worse in parts of Sudan as war and drought hit Darfur and Kordofan, the Associated Press reported last week. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a global body that monitors food crises, issued the warning about Sudan last Monday.
Drought tied to the El Niño weather pattern has hit over half the country, causing crop failures in some places and costing households food and income, the IPC said. Crops are growing poorly on 64% of farmland in North Darfur, and on roughly half the land in West and South Kordofan and South Darfur.
In May, close to 19.5 million people, over 40% of Sudan’s population, faced acute food insecurity at high levels, the IPC found. The IPC placed 135,000 of them at Phase 5, its worst category, which means starvation, very high malnutrition and people dying of disease or hunger.
In Afghanistan, malnutrition has reached record levels and more than a third of the population is going severely hungry, the United Nations warned earlier this month.
The U.N. estimates that 3.4 million Afghans are living in famine conditions, out of 15.9 million facing acute food insecurity. It expects the situation to worsen through the winter and spring, and projects that more than 4 million children in Afghanistan will require malnutrition treatment next year.
“We still have a window to act, but it is closing fast," John Aylieff, who heads the World Food Program's operation in Afghanistan, said in a statement.
A September report by the office of the U.N. secretary-general said Taliban policies, in particular the “enforced denial of the rights of women and girls,” along with a dysfunctional economy and obstacles facing foreign aid agencies, were destabilizing Afghanistan.
