Child Food Poverty: A Nutrition Crisis in Early Childhood

What and how children are fed in early childhood determines their survival and shapes their growth, development and learning for the rest of their lives. But millions of children – especially the youngest, the poorest and the most marginalized – do not have access to the minimum nutritious foods they need during the time in their lives when good nutrition matters most.

This brief sounds the alarm on the crisis of child food poverty – children’s inability to access and consume a minimum diverse diet in early childhood. It presents data to illustrate how many children are experiencing food poverty, how many children are living in severe food poverty, what their diets look like, where they live – including in which households, communities and countries – and how these metrics have changed over time.