An estimated 713 to 757 million people were undernourished globally in 2023, roughly 9 percent of the world’s population. That means about one in every eleven people on Earth does not get enough calories to sustain a healthy, active life. While that number has improved slightly from its pandemic-era peak, the world remains far off track from its goal of ending hunger by 2030.
What “Hunger” Actually Means in Global Data
The headline figures come from the United Nations, which defines undernourishment as consistently consuming fewer calories than the minimum your body needs for basic daily activity. That minimum varies by country because it accounts for the local population’s age, gender, and body size, but it generally reflects the bare floor of what a sedentary person requires to avoid wasting away.
Not everyone captured in that 713 to 757 million range is on the brink of starvation. The international system uses a five-phase scale to distinguish severity. At Phase 3 (Crisis), families have significant gaps in their food intake or can only meet minimum needs by selling off livestock, tools, or other assets they need to survive long term. At Phase 4 (Emergency), those gaps are large enough to cause very high rates of acute malnutrition and rising death rates. Phase 5 is full famine: at least 20 percent of a local population is in catastrophe, roughly one in three children is acutely malnourished, and people are dying of starvation or starvation-related disease at a rate of two per 10,000 residents every day.
The distinction matters because “hunger” in global reporting covers a wide spectrum, from a family that regularly goes to bed without enough food all the way to communities experiencing mass death from starvation.
Where Hunger Is Concentrated
Africa and Asia account for the vast majority of the world’s undernourished people, but the trends in each region are moving in opposite directions.
Africa crossed a grim threshold in 2024: more than 20 percent of the continent’s population now faces hunger, totaling 307 million people. That share is rising, not falling. Sub-Saharan Africa is hit hardest, with conflict, climate shocks, and economic instability reinforcing each other in countries like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and parts of the Horn of Africa.
Asia still has a larger absolute number of undernourished people (323 million in 2024), but the trend is improving. The continent’s hunger rate dropped from 7.9 percent in 2022 to 6.7 percent in 2024, driven largely by progress in South and Southeast Asia. Latin America and the Caribbean have also seen declines, with undernourishment falling to 5.1 percent, or 34 million people.
Conflict Is the Biggest Driver
Seventy percent of people facing acute food insecurity live in countries affected by conflict or fragility. War disrupts farming, destroys supply chains, displaces families from their land, and makes humanitarian aid nearly impossible to deliver. The World Food Programme identifies conflict as the primary cause of most of the world’s worst food crises, including those in Sudan, Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Palestine, where a sharp escalation in fighting sent hunger levels soaring.
The problem is intensifying. Global conflict increased by 25 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year. Each new or escalating war tends to push food prices higher locally, even when global commodity markets are relatively stable, because trade routes close, currencies collapse, and farmers flee.
Women Face Higher Rates Than Men
Hunger is not evenly distributed between genders. In 2024, 26.1 percent of adult women worldwide experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, compared to 24.2 percent of men. In raw numbers, that translates to 822 million food-insecure women versus 759 million men, a gap of nearly 64 million people. The gap actually widened from 2023 to 2024, growing from 1.3 percentage points to 1.9.
The reasons are structural. In many of the hardest-hit regions, women have less access to land, credit, and paid work. During food shortages, women in some households eat last and least. Female-headed households are particularly vulnerable when conflict or drought strikes because they often have fewer economic buffers to fall back on.
Children Pay the Steepest Price
Malnutrition in early childhood causes damage that lasts a lifetime. Stunting, where a child is significantly shorter than expected for their age because of chronic undernutrition, remains one of the most widespread consequences of global hunger. The international community set a target of reducing the number of stunted children to 90 million by 2030, but current projections show the world will miss that goal by 46 million children.
Stunting is not just about height. Children who are chronically undernourished during their first few years develop less brain capacity, perform worse in school, earn less as adults, and face higher risks of chronic disease. Wasting, the acute form of malnutrition where a child is dangerously thin for their height, is more immediately life-threatening and often spikes during famines and conflict.
Food Prices and Affordability
Global food prices have eased significantly since the extreme spike of early 2022, when the war in Ukraine sent grain and cooking oil costs to record highs. The FAO’s global food price index now sits roughly 20 percent below that peak. But “lower than the worst moment in recent memory” is not the same as affordable. Prices for vegetable oils, meat, and cereals have all ticked upward in recent months, partly driven by rising energy costs linked to conflict in the Near East.
For families in low-income countries, even modest price increases can be devastating. When you already spend 50 to 70 percent of your income on food, a 5 percent rise in cooking oil prices forces real trade-offs: fewer meals, less nutritious food, or pulling a child out of school to save money. Global averages can mask these realities because food price shocks hit the poorest households hardest.
The 2030 Goal Is Out of Reach
In 2015, the United Nations set a target of achieving “zero hunger” by 2030. That goal is no longer realistic. Current projections estimate that more than 600 million people will still be undernourished in 2030, a number roughly comparable to where things stood before the COVID-19 pandemic undid years of progress.
The reasons the goal will be missed are the same forces driving hunger today: escalating conflict, climate change making harvests less predictable, and economic inequality that leaves hundreds of millions of people unable to afford adequate food even when it exists in sufficient quantities. The world produces enough calories to feed everyone. The problem is access, not supply.