Every year, authors, journalists, teachers, researchers, schoolchildren and students ask the World Health Organisation for statistics about hunger and malnutrition. To help answer these questions, they have compiled a list of useful facts and figures on world hunger.
- 842 million people in the world do not have enough to eat. This number has fallen by 17 percent since 1990.
- The vast majority of hungry people (827 million) live in developing countries, where 14.3 percent of the population is undernourished.
- Asia has the largest number of hungry people (over 500 million) but Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest prevalence (24.8 percent of population).
- If women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million.
- Poor nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five – 3.1 million children each year.
- One out of six children — roughly 100 million — in developing countries is underweight.
- One in four of the world’s children are stunted. In developing countries the proportion can rise to one in three.
- 80 percent of the world’s stunted children live in just 20 countries.
- 66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone.
- WFP calculates that US$3.2 billion is needed per year to reach all 66 million hungry school-age children.