841 Million Undernourished? On the Tyranny of Deriving a Number

Peter Svedberg ()
Additional contact information
Peter Svedberg: Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University, Postal: Stockholm University, S-106 69 Stockholm, Sweden

No 656, Seminar Papers from Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies

Abstract: The FAO provides estimates of the prevalence of undernutrition which are claimed to be comparable over countries and time. These estimates form the empirical foundation for the resolution adopted by 186 governments at the World Food summit in 1996, with the intent of reducing the number of undernourished people by half before the year 2015. In this paper, it is demonstrated that the FAO estimates are unreliable indicators of the scope of the undernutrition problem, that they erroneously find chronic undernutrition to be most prevalent in Africa, and that they tend to direct policy in the wrong direction. Anthropometric measurements are argued to be more reliable and relevant for all purposes for which indicators of undernutrition are needed.

Keywords: UNdernutrition; Measurements; FAO; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J13 O19 Q11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 1998-10-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in World Development, 1999, pages 2081-2098.

Downloads: (external link)
http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:328086/FULLTEXT01 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iiessp:0656

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Seminar Papers from Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hanna Christiansson ().