February 24, 2000

2020 Vision Initiative Panel Discussion

Overcoming Child Malnutrition in Developing Countries

Past Achievements and Future Choices

When: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m., Friday, February 24, 2000
Where: International Food Policy Research Institute
2033 K Street NW, 4th floor (on 21st Street, between K and L Streets)

Almost 170 million children below the age of five in the developing world are malnourished. Eradicating child malnutrition remains a tremendous challenge to public policymakers around the globe, struggling with questions like:

• Which types of investments will have the greatest impact?
• How should we prioritize our investments?
• What is the best use of available resources to reduce malnutrition?

Overcoming Child Malnutrition in Developing Countries shows that improvements in the quality of caring practices for women and children--as captured through measures of women's status and women's education--accounted for more than 50 percent of the reductions in child malnutrition over 1970-95. Increases in national food availability contributed to over a quarter of the reduction, followed by improvements in countries' health environments.

The report recommends that efforts to improve the quality of care for women and children is a top priority and should be an integral part of strategies for reducing child malnutrition in the future. In Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia increases in food supplies remain particularly important. In all regions, two critical means of improving the quality of care for women and children in the long run are increasing women's status and education. To support these efforts, the authors find that continued economic growth and democratic decision-making processes are essential. Investments in all these areas would bolster the crucial efforts of more direct nutrition interventions such as micronutrient supplementation and fortification programs and community-based programs to improve home-based caring practices.

Authors Lisa Smith and Lawrence Haddad will share the results of their pioneering research on factors that contributed to reducing child malnutrition in the developing world over the past quarter century. Charles MacCormack will comment on these findings and put them in the context of the efforts made by nongovermental organizations and private voluntary organizations, like Save the Children, to help improve the well-being of children.

For more information contact: Don Lippincott (Tel: 202-862-5670; Email: d.lippincott@cgiar.org), or David Gately (Tel: 202-862-5679; Email: d.gately@cgiar.org).

IFPRI is a Washington, D.C.-based, internationally funded organization established in 1975 to identify and analyze policies for meeting the food needs of the developing world. IFPRI conducts research on ways to achieve sustainable food production and optimize land use, improve food consumption and income levels of the poor, enhance the efficiency of markets and links between agriculture and other sectors of the economy, and improve trade and macroeconomic conditions.

IFPRI's 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment was launched in 1993 to develop and promote a vision and an action plan for eradicating hunger and malnutrition while protecting the environment. This initiative brings together researchers, policymakers, and representatives of international organizations and media to examine the challenges to meeting the world's food needs sustainably and to propose solutions.