Global Hunger Index Improves, but Billions Remain Hungry

Hunger is still a daily concern for a large portion of the worlds population. This visualization shows how the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Global Hunger Index (GHI) has changed from 1990 to 2010. The GHI takes into account three factors: the proportion of people who are undernourished, the proportion of children under five who are underweight and the child mortality rate. The Guardian Datablog was kind enough to post the data and a visualization showing the 2010 levels. Instead of repeating that visualization, ours focuses on the change from 1990 to 2010. The past twenty years have seen some improvement from a global average of 17.8 to 14.1, though obviously hunger remains a challenging global issue.

Hunger is still a daily concern for a large portion of the worlds population. This visualization shows how the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Global Hunger Index (GHI) has changed from 1990 to 2010. The GHI takes into account three factors: the proportion of people who are undernourished, the proportion of children under five who are underweight and the child mortality rate. The Guardian Datablog was kind enough to post the data and a visualization showing the 2010 levels. Instead of repeating that visualization, ours focuses on the change from 1990 to 2010. The past twenty years have seen some improvement from a global average of 17.8 to 14.1, though obviously hunger remains a challenging global issue.

Green dots indicate decreasing hunger and red dots indicate increasing hunger. The size of the dot represents the magnitude of that change. In other words, since the Democratic Republic of the Congo has a very large red dot, hunger has drastically increased there from 1990 to 2010.