Appropriate food policies and investments could reduce child malnutrition by 43% in 2020

Abstract

This report describes past trends in global child malnutrition and assesses future prospects for reducing child malnutrition. Most developing countries have significantly reduced the proportion of malnourished children during the past three decades. However, because of population growth, the absolute number of malnourished children has fallen much less sharply. Moreover, the number of malnourished children has increased in Sub-Saharan Africa. A global food supply-and-demand model is used to project child malnutrition to 2020 under alternative assumptions on policies and investments that influence food security outcomes in education, clean water, agricultural research, irrigation and rural infrastructure. The baseline "best-estimate" projection shows that the number of malnourished children will continue to decline slowly but that child malnutrition will continue to increase in Sub-Saharan Africa. The optimistic scenario shows that better policy and more rapid economic and agricultural growth can lead to substantial food security improvements, but the pessimistic scenario shows that significantly worse outcomes are also possible with relatively small declines in policy and investment efforts relative to the baseline. A concerted effort to eliminate childhood malnutrition would require policy reform and significant increases in public investment to produce long-term gains in income growth, agricultural productivity and social indicators.