This section reports on four global nutrition indicators: stunting, wasting and overweight in children under 5 years of age, and anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years.
Stunting is a global indicator of nutrition that refers to a low height in relation to age and is the result of one or more past prolonged episodes of malnutrition. Children are defined as stunted if their height-for-age is two standard deviations below the median of WHO Child Growth Standards (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2022).
Stunted growth and development are the result of poor maternal health and nutrition, inadequate infant and young child feeding practices, and recurrent infections interacting with a variety of other factors over a sustained period. This form of malnutrition affects the physical and cognitive development of children, increasing their vulnerability to infectious diseases and their risk of mortality. In addition, stunted children have an increased risk of becoming overweight or obese and developing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) later in life. This can affect labour productivity, income-earning potential and social skills later in life (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2020; WHO, 2014a).
Globally, stunting affected 22.3 percent of children under 5 years of age in 2022. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the prevalence was 11.5 percent, which is significantly below the world estimate. Despite important reductions in the region (FIGURE 10), this decline has been slowing down. Between 2000 and 2022, the prevalence of stunting in the region decreased by 6.3 percentage points, compared to a reduction of only 1.2 percentage points in the period 2012–2022.
The region will not achieve the WHA 2025 or SDG 2030 targets of reducing by 40 and 50 percent, respectively, the number of children under 5 years of age who suffer from stunting (FIGURE 10). Only a third of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are on track to achieve this global nutrition target by 2030, showing important differences among countries of the region (UNICEF, WHO & World Bank, 2023).
Although progress has been made, there are important differences between subregions (TABLE 8) and no subregion is on track to achieve the 2025 WHA and 2030 SDG targets. In 2022, 5.7 million children under 5 years of age were stunted in the region, of which 2.8 million are in South America, 2.5 million in Mesoamerica, and 400 000 in the Caribbean (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2023). In South America, the prevalence of stunting in children under 5 years of age in 2022 was 9 percent, showing a reduction of 1.1 percentage points compared to 2012. In Mesoamerica, the prevalence was 16.9 percent, representing a decrease of 1.3 percentage points in the same period. In the Caribbean, the prevalence was 11.3 percent, while between 2012 and 2022 the decrease was 1.7 percentage points. It is imperative that the region accelerates the downward trend in the prevalence of stunting in order to achieve the 2030 target.
| 2000 | 2005 | 2010 | 2012 | 2015 | 2020 | 2022 | |
| World | 33.0 | 31.1 | 27.9 | 26.3 | 24.6 | 22.7 | 22.3 |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 17.8 | 15.7 | 13.6 | 12.7 | 12.1 | 11.7 | 11.5 |
| Caribbean | 15.3 | 14.6 | 13.7 | 13.0 | 12.5 | 11.7 | 11.3 |
| Mesoamerica | 25.3 | 22.3 | 19.3 | 18.2 | 17.5 | 17.2 | 16.9 |
| South America | 14.6 | 12.7 | 10.9 | 10.1 | 9.5 | 9.1 | 9.0 |
Although the region is not on track to achieve the SDG 2 target related to stunting, most countries have achieved a reduction in the prevalence of stunting between 2000 and 2022. During this period, the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Peru both reduced the prevalence of this condition by 21 percentage points. In the same period, Honduras, El Salvador and Paraguay also achieved significant reductions of 19.1, 18.7 and 14.3 percentage points, respectively (FIGURE 11).7 7 See Table 22 in Annex I.
However, Guatemala and Haiti, despite achieving a reduction of close to 10 percentage points between 2000 and 2022, still present a prevalence of stunting of 43.5 and 19.5 percent, respectively.
In the same period, Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago showed increases in the prevalence of stunting, although in both countries it has remained below 10 percent.
For their part, Chile, Saint Lucia and Paraguay have the lowest prevalence of stunting in the region, with all below 4 percent (1.6, 2.5 and 3.4 percent, respectively).
