What can countries with high stunting rates today learn from Japan’s experience of going from 70% to 5%?

One in four children in the world today suffers from stunting. That’s 150 million children under five years old.

A child is considered stunted if they are too short for their age. It is a consequence of malnutrition. Here, we’re not simply talking about children who are slightly smaller than their peers, but those who are shorter than the medically acceptable range for healthy growth.

Stunting reflects poor nutrition and frequent exposure to disease or illness, which reduces their ability to retain nutrients and increases their requirements. Stunting suggests that a child’s development has been hindered, and its impacts are not limited to childhood: it affects both physical and cognitive progress and can persist throughout a person’s life.

[...]







🔗 ourworldindata.org