Chapter 2 Sustainable Development Goal 2.2: Malnutrition
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.
2.1 Stunting among children under 5 years of age
Stunted growth and development are the result of poor maternal health and nutrition, inadequate infant and young child feeding practices, and repeated infections interacting with a variety of other factors over a sustained period. Children whose height-for-age is less than -2 standard deviations below the World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards median are classified as stunted.
The prevention of stunting, especially during the first 1000 days from conception until the age of 2, is of prime importance. Stunting before the age of 2 years predicts poorer cognitive and educational outcomes in later childhood and adolescence, and higher susceptibility to diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in adulthood. This can affect labour productivity, income-earning potential and social skills later in life. Stunted children an increased risk of becoming overweight or obese later in life.
FIGURE 10.
Prevalence of stunting among children under 5 years of age in Asia and the Pacific by subregion
Note: Please refer to Annex IV for the country coverage of this report. In particular, Central Asia and Western Asia are not included. Source: Based on UNICEF, WHO & World Bank. 2023. UNICEF-WHO-World Bank: Joint child malnutrition estimates - Levels and trends (2023 edition). [Cited 24 April 2023]. https://data.unicef.org/resources/jme-report-2023 Download: https://doi.org/10.4060/CC8228EN-fig10
In 2022, the latest data for Asia and the Pacific show that the prevalence of stunting has been on the decline, which is similar to the global trend, although the decline for both the world and the region are small. Moreover, the prevalence for the region is still slightly higher compared to the world. When one examines the subregional prevalences, a similar pattern can be observed for Eastern Asia, South-eastern Asia and Southern Asia, although the improvements were only slight. Of the three subregions, Eastern Asia had the lowest prevalence (4.9 percent) while Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand) had the highest prevalence (44 percent). An upward trend from the 2000 figure has been observed in Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand). Southern Asia, on the other hand, showed a declining trend from 2000 to 2022. (Figure 10 and Table 7).
TABLE 7.
Prevalence of stunting among children under 5 years of age (percent)
2000
2005
2010
2012
2015
2020
2022
World
33.0
31.1
27.9
26.3
24.6
22.7
22.3
Asia and the Pacific
38.0
35.3
31.2
29.2
26.7
23.9
23.4
Eastern Asia
19.3
13.1
9.0
7.7
6.6
5.3
4.9
Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand
31.2
36.6
40.3
40.9
41.9
43.6
44.0
South-eastern Asia
37.2
34.3
31.6
30.4
29.0
27.3
26.4
Southern Asia
48.1
46.4
42.6
40.3
37.0
32.2
30.5
Note: Please refer to Annex IV for the country coverage of this report. In particular, Central Asia and Western Asia are not included. Source: Based on UNICEF, WHO & World Bank. 2023. UNICEF-WHO-World Bank: Joint child malnutrition estimates - Levels and trends (2023 edition). [Cited 24 April 2023]. https://data.unicef.org/resources/jme-report-2023
Clearly, Asia and the Pacific region needs to step up its implementation of nutrition-sensitive as well as nutritionspecific interventions, including social safety nets, to address root causes of the serious problem of stunting.
FIGURE 11.
Prevalence of stunting among children under 5 years of age in Asia and the Pacific by country and subregion (2022)
Note: Please refer to Annex IV for the country coverage of this report. In particular, Central Asia and Western Asia are not included. Source: Based on UNICEF, WHO & World Bank. 2023. UNICEF-WHO-World Bank: Joint child malnutrition estimates - Levels and trends (2023 edition). [Cited 24 April 2023]. https://data.unicef.org/resources/jme-report-2023 Download: https://doi.org/10.4060/CC8228EN-fig11
Figure 11 gives the latest subregional and national data on the prevalence of stunting among children under five years of age. It shows that Papua New Guinea had the highest prevalence (51.2 percent). Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand), Vanuatu, the Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands all had prevalences around or higher than 30 percent. In Southern Asia, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan recorded prevalences between 32 and 34 percent. Indonesia, Philippines and Timor-Leste, are the countries with the highest prevalences of stunting in the South-eastern Asia subregion (45.1 percent, 31 percent and 28.8 percent, respectively). All the countries in Eastern Asia had a prevalence of stunting around 5 percent, except the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (16.8 percent) and the Republic of Korea (1.7 percent, the lowest in the region).
