Hunger and food insecurity: The scale of the problem in latin america and the caribbean

Around the year 2000, 18.5% of the Latin American and Caribbean population were extremely poor, 11% (close to 54 million people) were undernourished to some degree and nearly 8% of children under five exhibited a low weight–for–age. Although these figures indicate that hunger and food insecurity are a less dramatic problem in Latin America and the Caribbean than in other developing regions, the use of more precise indicators paints a more serious picture: undernourishment affects close to 22% of the population when it is measured on the basis of average rather than minimum calorie requirements, and close to 21% of all children suffer from moderate to serious chronic malnutrition. Differences across countries are also quite pronounced: undernourishment estimates developed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicate that more than 20% of the population suffer from hunger in seven of the region’s countries, while no more than 5% of the population go hungry in another six countries.

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