WFP Global Hunger Stats

www.RemoveHunger.com

Every year, authors, journalists, teachers, researchers, schoolchildren and students ask us for statistics about hunger and malnutrition. To help answer these questions, we've compiled a database of useful facts and figures on world hunger.

GLOBAL HUNGER

• 925 million people do not have enough to eat - more than the populations of USA, Canada and the European Union;
  (Source: FAO news release, 14 September 2010)
• 98 percent of the world's hungry live in developing countries;
  (Source: FAO news release, 2010)
• Asia and the Pacific region is home to over half the world’s population and nearly two thirds of the world’s hungry people;
  
  (Source: FAO news release, 2010)
• Women make up a little over half of the world's population, but they account for over 60 percent of the world’s hungry.
  (Source:  Strengthening efforts to eradicate hunger..., ECOSOC, 2007)
• 65 percent  of the world's hungry live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.
  (Source: FAO news release, 2010)

CHILD HUNGER

• More than 70 percent of the world's 146 million underweight children under age five years live in just 10 countries, with more than 50 per cent located in South Asia alone;
  (Source: Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition, UNICEF, 2006)
• 10.9 million children under five die in developing countries each year. Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60 percent of the deaths;
  (Source: The State of the World's Children, UNICEF, 2007)
• The cost of undernutrition to national economic development is estimated at US$20-30 billion per annum;
  (Source: Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition, UNICEF, 2006)
• One out of four children - roughly 146 million - in developing countries are underweight;
  (Source: The State of the World's Children, UNICEF, 2007)
• Every year WFP feeds more than 20 million children in school feeding programmes in some 70 countries. In 2008, WFP fed a record 23 million children.
  (Source: WFP School Feeding Unit)

www.RemoveHunger.com