About World Hunger: Who, where and why?

While most Americans enjoy more food than they can eat every day — and in fact, obesity is practically a national epidemic — it is easy to forget that nearly one in seven of the world's population is living in hunger. According to the UN's World Food Program:

• Approximately 925 million people in the world do not have enough food to eat — that's more than the populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union put together
• 65 percent of the world's hungry live in just seven countries: India, China, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia
• In developing countries, 10.9 million children under 5 die each year. 60 percent of these deaths are a result of malnutrition and hunger-related diseases
• A quarter of all children in developing countries are underweight
• In quantitative terms, the world produces enough food for every single human being to be sufficiently nourished.

So why are people hungry? The main causes of hunger are natural disasters, war, poverty, unstable agricultural infrastructure and over-exploitation of the environment. These factors can reduce or even wipe out the sources of income on which some communities rely, leading to a cycle of hunger that is very hard to break.

But we can help. To find out how, visit our Help Fight Hunger page>

-------------------------
Statistics on this page taken from the UN's World Food Program. Click to read more at www.wfp.org/hunger.