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CountryAtlas
Agriculture & natural resources · Food security

Prevalence of undernourishment

% of population · Annual · 169 of 218 countries (78 %) · 2001–2023
Ranking Download CSV
World average (population-weighted)
9.0 %
across 165 countries, 2023
Latest observation
2023
Source updated
13 Jul 2026
CountryAtlas refreshed
11 Sep 2026
Snapshot 20260911T072322Z

World map

One value per country for the selected year. Hatched = no data.

No data available

Trend

Aggregate across the countries of a group, year by year. Computed by CountryAtlas from country values — no published aggregate is used.

Not enough countries to aggregate this indicator for World.

Highest and lowest

The five leaders and the five trailing countries, 2023.

Full ranking →

Top 5

Bottom 5

Compare countries

Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.

No series for the selected countries.

Definition

Definition
Unit
% of population (%)
Frequency
Annual
Aggregation
none · Lower is better
Valid range
0 – 100

Sources & provenance

Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.

  1. Priority #1
    World BankWDISN.ITK.DEFC.ZSok
    169 countries · 3,831 obs. · → 2023 · CC BY 4.0

    Prevalence of undernourishment is the percentage of the population whose habitual food consumption is insufficient to provide the dietary energy levels that are required to maintain a normal active and healthy life. Data showing as 2.5 may signify a prevalence of undernourishment below 2.5%. Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), uri: http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home

    Open at source

Series-level selection: for each country the whole series comes from the highest-priority source that has any non-forecast value for it. If a lower-priority source is more than three years fresher, the freshest source wins instead. Non-chosen values are kept as alternatives, never discarded.

Countries without data

Typical reasons: the source does not survey small territories or micro-states; the statistical office reports with a lag of one to three years; the series is only compiled for member countries of the source organisation (OECD, EU, Eurostat); or a value exists but failed validation and is quarantined rather than shown.

Downloads & API

Every observation for this indicator, all countries and years, with provenance columns.

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API example

One country, full history. Replace CAN by any ISO3 code or slug.

bash
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=undernourishment-prevalence" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'

API documentation →