Levels and trends in child malnutrition: UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Group joint child malnutrition estimates: key findings of the 2025 edition

Overview

Child malnutrition estimates for the indicators stunting, severe wasting, wasting and overweight describe the magnitude and patterns of under- and overnutrition.  The UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates (JME) inter-agency group regularly updates the global and regional estimates in prevalence and numbers for each indicator. The key findings 2025 Edition includes global, regional, and country trends from 2000-2024 for stunting and overweight. For wasting and severe wasting, country estimates are based on available primary data sources (e.g., household surveys), global trends are presented for 2000-2024 and the latest estimates (2024) at the regional level.

Country progress assessment towards the 2030 targets are aggregated into regional summaries included in the brochure. The analysis reveals that, globally, we are off track to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 targets.

More intensive efforts are required if the world is to achieve the global target of reducing the number of stunted children to 90 million by 2030. With current progress, the 2030 target will be missed by 46.0 million children.

Gaps in the available data in some regions make it challenging to accurately assess progress towards global targets. Regular data collection is therefore critical to plan and monitor country, regional and global progress on child malnutrition moving forward.

The JME 2025 edition also introduces sex-disaggregated country, regional and global estimates for stunting and overweight for the first time.