Trends and determinants of global child malnutrition: what can we learn from history?

Contributor(s): Professor Eric Schneider | Children with poor nutrition or who are exposed to high levels of chronic disease grow more slowly than healthy children. Thus, children’s growth is a sensitive metric of how population health has evolved over time. Eric begins by showing how child growth has changed around the world since the nineteenth century and linking changes in child growth to child stunting, children who are too short for their age relative to healthy standards, the most common indicator used to measure malnutrition in LMICs today. Then he discusses the key determinants of poor child growth drawing on historical research and contemporary findings related to the ‘Indian Enigma’, the puzzling fact that Indian children are shorter than sub-Saharan African children today despite India’s lead in many indicators of economic development. Finally, he will consider what lessons historical analysis of child malnutrition has for tackling child stunting today.