placestats

Child stunting vs. Electricity use per person

Fades after adjusting for income

Across 154 countries, Child stunting and Electricity use per person rise and fall together at r = -0.51 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.09, which could easily be chance (q = 0.24, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things. Caution: correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed.

Comparing countries across the middle half of electricity use per person, 441 to 4,357 kWh per person, child stunting is better by 6.23% of children under 5 at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap reverses, to 0.967% of children under 5 the other way.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.512p = 1.1e-11 · 154 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.089p = 0.274 · likely range [-0.07, +0.24]
p, allowing for regions0.305standard error 0.079 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.238across 13,797 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Child stunting · % of children under 5link with income -0.80 · proxy
Electricity use per person · kWh per personlink with income +0.93 · proxy

Both of these rise and fall closely with national income, so a strong link between them before adjusting was close to certain. Read the adjusted figure, not the first one.

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Child stunting · % of children under 5 →Electricity use per person · kWh per person →1%55.3%18.223,919Afghanistan: 42% of children under 5, 160 kWh per personAngola: 47.7% of children under 5, 411 kWh per personAlbania: 7.4% of children under 5, 3,106 kWh per personArgentina: 10.7% of children under 5, 3,543 kWh per personArmenia: 6.2% of children under 5, 2,757 kWh per personAustralia: 3.1% of children under 5, 10,615 kWh per personAzerbaijan: 6.8% of children under 5, 2,613 kWh per personBurundi: 55.3% of children under 5, 40.6 kWh per personBelgium: 2.6% of children under 5, 7,361 kWh per personBenin: 33.2% of children under 5, 160 kWh per personBurkina Faso: 19.5% of children under 5, 135 kWh per personBangladesh: 25.1% of children under 5, 672 kWh per personBulgaria: 5.5% of children under 5, 5,440 kWh per personBahrain: 4.6% of children under 5, 23,919 kWh per personBosnia and Herzegovina: 7.9% of children under 5, 4,599 kWh per personBelarus: 1.1% of children under 5, 5,054 kWh per personBelize: 11.7% of children under 5, 2,038 kWh per personBolivia: 10.7% of children under 5, 1,083 kWh per personBrazil: 8.9% of children under 5, 3,581 kWh per personBarbados: 5.8% of children under 5, 3,930 kWh per personBrunei Darussalam: 9.9% of children under 5, 12,016 kWh per personBhutan: 17.9% of children under 5, 15,742 kWh per personBotswana: 21% of children under 5, 1,852 kWh per personCentral African Republic: 38.9% of children under 5, 27.2 kWh per personChile: 1.7% of children under 5, 4,456 kWh per personChina: 4.5% of children under 5, 7,460 kWh per personCote d'Ivoire: 20.3% of children under 5, 315 kWh per personCameroon: 27.2% of children under 5, 251 kWh per personCongo, Dem. Rep.: 44.1% of children under 5, 159 kWh per personCongo, Rep.: 16.3% of children under 5, 850 kWh per personColombia: 11.6% of children under 5, 1,715 kWh per personComoros: 17.4% of children under 5, 165 kWh per personCabo Verde: 5.3% of children under 5, 991 kWh per personCosta Rica: 10.6% of children under 5, 2,416 kWh per personCzechia: 2.4% of children under 5, 6,413 kWh per personGermany: 2.2% of children under 5, 6,188 kWh per personDjibouti: 20.9% of children under 5, 685 kWh per personDominican Republic: 5.6% of children under 5, 1,969 kWh per personAlgeria: 8.9% of children under 5, 2,005 kWh per personEcuador: 17.7% of children under 5, 2,003 kWh per personEgypt, Arab Rep.: 12.9% of children under 5, 2,064 kWh per personEstonia: 1.3% of children under 5, 6,948 kWh per personEthiopia: 35.5% of children under 5, 229 kWh per personFinland: 1.7% of children under 5, 15,610 kWh per personFiji: 7.2% of children under 5, 1,238 kWh per personGabon: 13.7% of children under 5, 1,252 kWh per personUnited Kingdom: 3.5% of children under 5, 4,621 kWh per personGeorgia: 4.7% of children under 5, 3,862 kWh per personGhana: 15.6% of children under 5, 634 kWh per personGuinea: 26.6% of children under 5, 273 kWh per personGambia, The: 14% of children under 5, 185 kWh per personGuinea-Bissau: 28.3% of children under 5, 36.3 kWh per personEquatorial Guinea: 17.1% of children under 5, 787 kWh per personGreece: 2% of children under 5, 5,590 kWh per personGuatemala: 44.6% of children under 5, 888 kWh per personGuyana: 7.1% of children under 5, 1,660 kWh per personHonduras: 17.9% of children under 5, 1,167 kWh per personHaiti: 21.6% of children under 5, 73.1 kWh per personIndonesia: 22.6% of children under 5, 1,314 kWh per personIndia: 32.9% of children under 5, 1,423 kWh per personIreland: 2.2% of children under 5, 7,091 kWh per personIran, Islamic Rep.: 4.8% of children under 5, 4,281 kWh per personIraq: 9.4% of children under 5, 3,406 kWh per personJamaica: 6.9% of children under 5, 1,733 kWh per personJordan: 7.7% of children under 5, 2,054 kWh per personJapan: 5.2% of children under 5, 8,366 kWh per personKazakhstan: 4.4% of children under 5, 6,050 kWh per personKenya: 17.9% of children under 5, 271 kWh per personKyrgyz Republic: 11% of children under 5, 2,647 kWh per personCambodia: 22% of children under 5, 1,254 kWh per personKiribati: 14.7% of children under 5, 297 kWh per personKorea, Rep.: 1.8% of children under 5, 12,090 kWh per personKuwait: 4.5% of children under 5, 18,402 kWh per personLao PDR: 29.9% of children under 5, 2,009 kWh per personLebanon: 10.1% of children under 5, 920 kWh per personLiberia: 26.9% of children under 5, 102 kWh per personLibya: 9.2% of children under 5, 4,686 kWh per personSt. Lucia: 2.8% of children under 5, 2,225 kWh per personSri Lanka: 10.1% of children under 5, 743 kWh per personLesotho: 35% of children under 5, 248 kWh per personLithuania: 1.6% of children under 5, 4,353 kWh per personLatvia: 1.7% of children under 5, 4,057 kWh per personMorocco: 13.7% of children under 5, 1,255 kWh per personMoldova: 4.2% of children under 5, 2,059 kWh per personMadagascar: 38.4% of children under 5, 76 kWh per personMaldives: 14.2% of children under 5, 1,610 kWh per personMexico: 13.1% of children under 5, 2,703 kWh per personNorth Macedonia: 3.8% of children under 5, 4,604 kWh per personMali: 23.2% of children under 5, 223 kWh per personMalta: 3.5% of children under 5, 5,922 kWh per personMyanmar: 24.5% of children under 5, 402 kWh per personMontenegro: 8% of children under 5, 6,859 kWh per personMongolia: 7.1% of children under 5, 3,528 kWh per personMozambique: 37% of children under 5, 476 kWh per personMauritania: 21.5% of children under 5, 458 kWh per personMauritius: 7.8% of children under 5, 2,683 kWh per personMalawi: 33.2% of children under 5, 83.6 kWh per personMalaysia: 24.3% of children under 5, 5,556 kWh per personNamibia: 16.4% of children under 5, 1,333 kWh per personNiger: 48.3% of children under 5, 79.5 kWh per personNigeria: 33.8% of children under 5, 165 kWh per personNetherlands: 1.6% of children under 5, 6,601 kWh per personNepal: 26% of children under 5, 372 kWh per personNaoero: 16% of children under 5, 4,178 kWh per personOman: 12.9% of children under 5, 9,617 kWh per personPakistan: 33.6% of children under 5, 766 kWh per personPanama: 14% of children under 5, 2,943 kWh per personPeru: 10.6% of children under 5, 1,749 kWh per personPhilippines: 27.7% of children under 5, 1,054 kWh per personPapua New Guinea: 47.6% of children under 5, 447 kWh per personPoland: 1% of children under 5, 4,570 kWh per personPortugal: 3.2% of children under 5, 5,805 kWh per personParaguay: 3.2% of children under 5, 4,228 kWh per personWest Bank and Gaza: 8% of children under 5, 1,454 kWh per personQatar: 5.4% of children under 5, 18,030 kWh per personRomania: 7% of children under 5, 2,876 kWh per personRwanda: 29.8% of children under 5, 85.6 kWh per personSaudi Arabia: 11.1% of children under 5, 13,385 kWh per personSudan: 35.4% of children under 5, 309 kWh per personSenegal: 17.2% of children under 5, 439 kWh per personSingapore: 2.8% of children under 5, 10,295 kWh per personSolomon Islands: 29.8% of children under 5, 134 kWh per personSierra Leone: 25.2% of children under 5, 24.3 kWh per personEl Salvador: 9.4% of children under 5, 985 kWh per personSomalia, Fed. Rep.: 23.9% of children under 5, 22.6 kWh per personSerbia: 4.6% of children under 5, 5,591 kWh per personSao Tome and Principe: 10% of children under 5, 390 kWh per personSuriname: 8% of children under 5, 2,743 kWh per personEswatini: 18.9% of children under 5, 1,328 kWh per personSeychelles: 6.2% of children under 5, 4,830 kWh per personSyrian Arab Republic: 23.5% of children under 5, 984 kWh per personTurks and Caicos Islands: 3.2% of children under 5, 5,799 kWh per personChad: 31.5% of children under 5, 18.2 kWh per personTogo: 23% of children under 5, 263 kWh per personThailand: 12.3% of children under 5, 3,143 kWh per personTajikistan: 13.1% of children under 5, 1,805 kWh per personTurkmenistan: 6.5% of children under 5, 3,204 kWh per personTimor-Leste: 45.4% of children under 5, 364 kWh per personTonga: 1.6% of children under 5, 672 kWh per personTrinidad and Tobago: 7.8% of children under 5, 6,334 kWh per personTunisia: 8.9% of children under 5, 2,016 kWh per personTurkiye: 5.5% of children under 5, 4,014 kWh per personTanzania: 29.9% of children under 5, 132 kWh per personUganda: 23.5% of children under 5, 107 kWh per personUkraine: 11.7% of children under 5, 2,719 kWh per personUruguay: 6.5% of children under 5, 4,358 kWh per personUnited States: 4.2% of children under 5, 13,061 kWh per personUzbekistan: 6.7% of children under 5, 2,419 kWh per personViet Nam: 19.2% of children under 5, 3,087 kWh per personVanuatu: 31% of children under 5, 250 kWh per personSamoa: 8.4% of children under 5, 734 kWh per personSouth Africa: 24.4% of children under 5, 3,658 kWh per personZambia: 32.3% of children under 5, 779 kWh per personZimbabwe: 23.7% of children under 5, 727 kWh per personAGOBDIBHRBTNCPVKWTLCANERQATTON

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted-0.5121.1e-11154
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted-0.7871.2e-33154
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.0890.274154
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income-0.1670.039154

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 154 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.423 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.068 (without QAT) to +0.115 (without GTM). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: GTM (+0.026).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed
  • sign flips once outliers are trimmed
  • direction is not consistent across regions

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
East Asia & Pacific24-0.02
Europe & Central Asia32-0.09
Latin America & Caribbean25-0.36
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan20+0.26
Sub-Saharan Africa46+0.05

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third52-0.13
Middle third51-0.03
Richest third51+0.01

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians86+0.00
Muslims48+0.09

By last european coloniser

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
France25+0.29
Never a European colony21+0.41
Spain18-0.43
United Kingdom51+0.04

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.094 after dropping 12 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 25years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = -0.067, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose child stunting moved did not tend to see their electricity use per person move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.089for comparison
Within countries-0.303each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.067q = 0.518 · 160 countries
Year-on-year changes-0.011q = 0.785
Read with care.
  • Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.
  • Much of the within-country association disappears once shared global year effects are removed, which points to a common worldwide trend rather than a country-level relationship.

3,974 country-years (one country in one year), 160 countries, 2000–2024, about 25 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 3% for Child stunting, 9% for Electricity use per person. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.20−0.2-100+10years Electricity use per person trails Child stunting →lag -10: r = 0.114 (n = 2,577)lag -9: r = 0.100 (n = 2,716)lag -8: r = 0.090 (n = 2,860)lag -7: r = 0.079 (n = 3,000)lag -6: r = 0.068 (n = 3,140)lag -5: r = 0.055 (n = 3,280)lag -4: r = 0.027 (n = 3,420)lag -3: r = -0.003 (n = 3,560)lag -2: r = -0.028 (n = 3,700)lag -1: r = -0.050 (n = 3,839)lag +0: r = -0.067 (n = 3,974)lag +1: r = -0.088 (n = 3,887)lag +2: r = -0.107 (n = 3,730)lag +3: r = -0.124 (n = 3,573)lag +4: r = -0.138 (n = 3,415)lag +5: r = -0.149 (n = 3,257)lag +6: r = -0.154 (n = 3,098)lag +7: r = -0.157 (n = 2,939)lag +8: r = -0.156 (n = 2,780)lag +9: r = -0.156 (n = 2,621)lag +10: r = -0.163 (n = 2,462)

Same year (lag 0): -0.067. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

This curve peaks at the edge of the window (lag +10), so it is still drifting where the search stops. That pattern usually reflects a slow trend left over in the data, not a link with real timing. The peak value should not be read as the “true” link at the right lag.

The data


% of children under 5
kWh per person		Years
Burundi BDI55.3%40.62024
Niger NER48.3%79.52024
Angola AGO47.7%4112024
Papua New Guinea PNG47.6%4472024
Timor-Leste TLS45.4%3642024
Guatemala GTM44.6%8882024
Congo, Dem. Rep. COD44.1%1592024
Afghanistan AFG42%1602024
Central African Republic CAF38.9%27.22024, 2023
Madagascar MDG38.4%762024
Mozambique MOZ37%4762024
Ethiopia ETH35.5%2292024, 2025
Sudan SDN35.4%3092024
Lesotho LSO35%2482024
Nigeria NGA33.8%1652024, 2025

World Bank, World Development Indicators
Ember, Yearly Electricity Data; population from Our World in Data, with processing by Our World in Data

Sources

Child stunting

Prevalence of stunting, height for age, modelled estimate (% of children under 5)

UNICEF, WHO and World Bank Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

An estimate from a statistical model. The agencies fit a model to household surveys and predict every country and year. So this is smoother than the surveys behind it, and it has values for years nobody measured. The survey-only series never reaches sixty countries in any year.

Electricity use per person

Electricity demand per person (kWh)

Ember · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

All the electricity a country uses in a year, divided by its population, in kilowatt-hours (kWh). One kWh runs a 100-watt bulb for ten hours. It counts the power made at home plus imports, minus exports, including the power lost in wires along the way. So it is a little higher than "consumption" figures that leave those losses out. Use per person ranges from under 100 kWh a year in parts of Africa to over 50,000 in Iceland, where aluminium smelters use most of it, so a few industries can set a small country's figure. It rises steeply with income, and is measured in percentage terms (on a log scale) where it is used for adjusting. No "better" direction is set: more electricity can mean more comfort and industry, or more waste.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2022–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 13,797 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Child stunting and Electricity use per person

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Child stunting changes Electricity use per person, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Child stunting or Electricity use per person