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What you should know about this indicator

  • Undernourishment is solely determined by the sufficiency of energy (calorie) intake. It does not consider the quality or diversity of someone's diet.
  • The FAO maintained a constant definition of "developing countries" throughout the data series, with the following definition: "Includes all countries other than developed countries, namely: all countries in Africa except South Africa, all countries in Asia except Israel and Japan, all countries in Oceania except Australia and New Zealand, and all countries in North and Central America except Canada and USA, and all countries in South America."
  • FAO has adapted its methodology for estimating undernourishment and no longer updates this long-term series from the 1970s.
  • Figures for 1970 and 1980 are the average between two FAO estimates from annual "State of Food Insecurity in the World" reports in 2006 and 2010. Therefore, these estimates should be interpreted cautiously but have been included for a longer-term perspective on reduction trends.
Share of people who are undernourished in developing countries
Share of people in developing countries whose habitual food consumption is insufficient to provide the dietary energy required to maintain a normal, active and healthy life.
Source
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 23, 2017
Date range
1970–2015
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations – Food Security Indicators

Retrieved on
May 23, 2017
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/ess-fadata/en/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017). Food Security Indicators.
The estimates for 1970 and 1980 are the average of two figures published in:

    

  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2006). The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006. Rome.
    • 

  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2010). The State of Food Insecurity in the World: Addressing food insecurity in protracted crises. Rome.
    •
Retrieved on
May 23, 2017
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/ess-fadata/en/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017). Food Security Indicators.
The estimates for 1970 and 1980 are the average of two figures published in:

    

  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2006). The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006. Rome.
    • 

  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2010). The State of Food Insecurity in the World: Addressing food insecurity in protracted crises. Rome.
    •

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

The figures for 1970 and 1980 have been taken as the average between two FAO estimates from the annual "State of Food Insecurity in the World" reports of 2006 and 2010. All other years are from FAO's Food Security Indicators.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of people who are undernourished in developing countries”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Hunger and Undernourishment”. Data adapted from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260707-154340/grapher/prevalence-of-undernourishment-in-developing-countries-since-1970.html [online resource] (archived on July 7, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2017) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of people who are undernourished in developing countries” [dataset]. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Food Security Indicators” [original data]. Retrieved July 7, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260707-154340/grapher/prevalence-of-undernourishment-in-developing-countries-since-1970.html (archived on July 7, 2026).

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