placestats

Child stunting vs. Tuberculosis incidence

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 156 countries, Child stunting and Tuberculosis incidence rise and fall together at r = +0.54 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.33 (q = 0.032, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a weak positive link remains.

Comparing countries across the middle half of child stunting, 5.58% to 23.8% of children under 5, tuberculosis incidence is worse by 122 per 100,000 people at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 102 per 100,000 people.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.541p = 3.2e-13 · 156 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.326p = 3.6e-5 · likely range [+0.18, +0.46]
p, allowing for regions0.002standard error 0.064 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.032across 12,497 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
Tuberculosis incidence · per 100,000 peoplelink with income -0.67 · high

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 →Tuberculosis incidence · per 100,000 people →1%55.3%0.29945Afghanistan: 42% of children under 5, 203 per 100,000 peopleAngola: 47.7% of children under 5, 373 per 100,000 peopleAlbania: 7.4% of children under 5, 15 per 100,000 peopleArgentina: 10.7% of children under 5, 44 per 100,000 peopleArmenia: 6.2% of children under 5, 19 per 100,000 peopleAustralia: 3.1% of children under 5, 6.9 per 100,000 peopleAzerbaijan: 6.8% of children under 5, 64 per 100,000 peopleBurundi: 55.3% of children under 5, 83 per 100,000 peopleBelgium: 2.6% of children under 5, 2.7 per 100,000 peopleBenin: 33.2% of children under 5, 40 per 100,000 peopleBurkina Faso: 19.5% of children under 5, 57 per 100,000 peopleBangladesh: 25.1% of children under 5, 221 per 100,000 peopleBulgaria: 5.5% of children under 5, 12 per 100,000 peopleBahrain: 4.6% of children under 5, 12 per 100,000 peopleBosnia and Herzegovina: 7.9% of children under 5, 21 per 100,000 peopleBelarus: 1.1% of children under 5, 17 per 100,000 peopleBelize: 11.7% of children under 5, 34 per 100,000 peopleBolivia: 10.7% of children under 5, 114 per 100,000 peopleBrazil: 8.9% of children under 5, 49 per 100,000 peopleBarbados: 5.8% of children under 5, 1 per 100,000 peopleBrunei Darussalam: 9.9% of children under 5, 65 per 100,000 peopleBhutan: 17.9% of children under 5, 191 per 100,000 peopleBotswana: 21% of children under 5, 143 per 100,000 peopleCentral African Republic: 38.9% of children under 5, 419 per 100,000 peopleChile: 1.7% of children under 5, 19 per 100,000 peopleChina: 4.5% of children under 5, 49 per 100,000 peopleCote d'Ivoire: 20.3% of children under 5, 99 per 100,000 peopleCameroon: 27.2% of children under 5, 132 per 100,000 peopleCongo, Dem. Rep.: 44.1% of children under 5, 377 per 100,000 peopleCongo, Rep.: 16.3% of children under 5, 302 per 100,000 peopleColombia: 11.6% of children under 5, 49 per 100,000 peopleComoros: 17.4% of children under 5, 22 per 100,000 peopleCabo Verde: 5.3% of children under 5, 47 per 100,000 peopleCosta Rica: 10.6% of children under 5, 9.3 per 100,000 peopleCzechia: 2.4% of children under 5, 4.9 per 100,000 peopleGermany: 2.2% of children under 5, 5.4 per 100,000 peopleDjibouti: 20.9% of children under 5, 495 per 100,000 peopleDominican Republic: 5.6% of children under 5, 51 per 100,000 peopleAlgeria: 8.9% of children under 5, 54 per 100,000 peopleEcuador: 17.7% of children under 5, 66 per 100,000 peopleEgypt, Arab Rep.: 12.9% of children under 5, 10 per 100,000 peopleEstonia: 1.3% of children under 5, 8.2 per 100,000 peopleEthiopia: 35.5% of children under 5, 141 per 100,000 peopleFinland: 1.7% of children under 5, 3.7 per 100,000 peopleFiji: 7.2% of children under 5, 104 per 100,000 peopleGabon: 13.7% of children under 5, 371 per 100,000 peopleUnited Kingdom: 3.5% of children under 5, 9.7 per 100,000 peopleGeorgia: 4.7% of children under 5, 45 per 100,000 peopleGhana: 15.6% of children under 5, 126 per 100,000 peopleGuinea: 26.6% of children under 5, 178 per 100,000 peopleGambia, The: 14% of children under 5, 138 per 100,000 peopleGuinea-Bissau: 28.3% of children under 5, 176 per 100,000 peopleEquatorial Guinea: 17.1% of children under 5, 199 per 100,000 peopleGreece: 2% of children under 5, 3.6 per 100,000 peopleGuatemala: 44.6% of children under 5, 28 per 100,000 peopleGuyana: 7.1% of children under 5, 67 per 100,000 peopleHonduras: 17.9% of children under 5, 38 per 100,000 peopleHaiti: 21.6% of children under 5, 175 per 100,000 peopleIndonesia: 22.6% of children under 5, 382 per 100,000 peopleIndia: 32.9% of children under 5, 187 per 100,000 peopleIreland: 2.2% of children under 5, 6.2 per 100,000 peopleIran, Islamic Rep.: 4.8% of children under 5, 10 per 100,000 peopleIraq: 9.4% of children under 5, 21 per 100,000 peopleJamaica: 6.9% of children under 5, 2.3 per 100,000 peopleJordan: 7.7% of children under 5, 3.5 per 100,000 peopleJapan: 5.2% of children under 5, 9.8 per 100,000 peopleKazakhstan: 4.4% of children under 5, 45 per 100,000 peopleKenya: 17.9% of children under 5, 207 per 100,000 peopleKyrgyz Republic: 11% of children under 5, 128 per 100,000 peopleCambodia: 22% of children under 5, 272 per 100,000 peopleKiribati: 14.7% of children under 5, 945 per 100,000 peopleKorea, Rep.: 1.8% of children under 5, 35 per 100,000 peopleKuwait: 4.5% of children under 5, 10 per 100,000 peopleLao PDR: 29.9% of children under 5, 127 per 100,000 peopleLebanon: 10.1% of children under 5, 13 per 100,000 peopleLiberia: 26.9% of children under 5, 207 per 100,000 peopleLibya: 9.2% of children under 5, 63 per 100,000 peopleSt. Lucia: 2.8% of children under 5, 0.56 per 100,000 peopleSri Lanka: 10.1% of children under 5, 59 per 100,000 peopleLesotho: 35% of children under 5, 548 per 100,000 peopleLithuania: 1.6% of children under 5, 31 per 100,000 peopleLatvia: 1.7% of children under 5, 21 per 100,000 peopleMorocco: 13.7% of children under 5, 98 per 100,000 peopleMoldova: 4.2% of children under 5, 64 per 100,000 peopleMadagascar: 38.4% of children under 5, 224 per 100,000 peopleMaldives: 14.2% of children under 5, 40 per 100,000 peopleMexico: 13.1% of children under 5, 28 per 100,000 peopleMarshall Islands: 30% of children under 5, 411 per 100,000 peopleNorth Macedonia: 3.8% of children under 5, 11 per 100,000 peopleMali: 23.2% of children under 5, 51 per 100,000 peopleMalta: 3.5% of children under 5, 15 per 100,000 peopleMyanmar: 24.5% of children under 5, 482 per 100,000 peopleMontenegro: 8% of children under 5, 16 per 100,000 peopleMongolia: 7.1% of children under 5, 446 per 100,000 peopleMozambique: 37% of children under 5, 361 per 100,000 peopleMauritania: 21.5% of children under 5, 65 per 100,000 peopleMauritius: 7.8% of children under 5, 13 per 100,000 peopleMalawi: 33.2% of children under 5, 113 per 100,000 peopleMalaysia: 24.3% of children under 5, 96 per 100,000 peopleNamibia: 16.4% of children under 5, 422 per 100,000 peopleNiger: 48.3% of children under 5, 86 per 100,000 peopleNigeria: 33.8% of children under 5, 219 per 100,000 peopleNetherlands: 1.6% of children under 5, 4.7 per 100,000 peopleNepal: 26% of children under 5, 227 per 100,000 peopleNaoero: 16% of children under 5, 161 per 100,000 peopleOman: 12.9% of children under 5, 11 per 100,000 peoplePakistan: 33.6% of children under 5, 266 per 100,000 peoplePanama: 14% of children under 5, 63 per 100,000 peoplePeru: 10.6% of children under 5, 139 per 100,000 peoplePhilippines: 27.7% of children under 5, 625 per 100,000 peoplePapua New Guinea: 47.6% of children under 5, 664 per 100,000 peoplePoland: 1% of children under 5, 11 per 100,000 peoplePortugal: 3.2% of children under 5, 15 per 100,000 peopleParaguay: 3.2% of children under 5, 81 per 100,000 peopleWest Bank and Gaza: 8% of children under 5, 0.29 per 100,000 peopleQatar: 5.4% of children under 5, 37 per 100,000 peopleRomania: 7% of children under 5, 60 per 100,000 peopleRwanda: 29.8% of children under 5, 62 per 100,000 peopleSaudi Arabia: 11.1% of children under 5, 8.4 per 100,000 peopleSudan: 35.4% of children under 5, 47 per 100,000 peopleSenegal: 17.2% of children under 5, 132 per 100,000 peopleSingapore: 2.8% of children under 5, 43 per 100,000 peopleSolomon Islands: 29.8% of children under 5, 123 per 100,000 peopleSierra Leone: 25.2% of children under 5, 372 per 100,000 peopleEl Salvador: 9.4% of children under 5, 116 per 100,000 peopleSomalia, Fed. Rep.: 23.9% of children under 5, 151 per 100,000 peopleSerbia: 4.6% of children under 5, 8.7 per 100,000 peopleSao Tome and Principe: 10% of children under 5, 87 per 100,000 peopleSuriname: 8% of children under 5, 34 per 100,000 peopleEswatini: 18.9% of children under 5, 319 per 100,000 peopleSeychelles: 6.2% of children under 5, 17 per 100,000 peopleSyrian Arab Republic: 23.5% of children under 5, 23 per 100,000 peopleTurks and Caicos Islands: 3.2% of children under 5, 8.6 per 100,000 peopleChad: 31.5% of children under 5, 118 per 100,000 peopleTogo: 23% of children under 5, 48 per 100,000 peopleThailand: 12.3% of children under 5, 146 per 100,000 peopleTajikistan: 13.1% of children under 5, 75 per 100,000 peopleTurkmenistan: 6.5% of children under 5, 40 per 100,000 peopleTimor-Leste: 45.4% of children under 5, 496 per 100,000 peopleTonga: 1.6% of children under 5, 1.9 per 100,000 peopleTrinidad and Tobago: 7.8% of children under 5, 27 per 100,000 peopleTunisia: 8.9% of children under 5, 39 per 100,000 peopleTurkiye: 5.5% of children under 5, 13 per 100,000 peopleTuvalu: 5.3% of children under 5, 223 per 100,000 peopleTanzania: 29.9% of children under 5, 172 per 100,000 peopleUganda: 23.5% of children under 5, 197 per 100,000 peopleUkraine: 11.7% of children under 5, 86 per 100,000 peopleUruguay: 6.5% of children under 5, 47 per 100,000 peopleUnited States: 4.2% of children under 5, 3.2 per 100,000 peopleUzbekistan: 6.7% of children under 5, 51 per 100,000 peopleViet Nam: 19.2% of children under 5, 182 per 100,000 peopleVanuatu: 31% of children under 5, 44 per 100,000 peopleSamoa: 8.4% of children under 5, 5.5 per 100,000 peopleSouth Africa: 24.4% of children under 5, 389 per 100,000 peopleZambia: 32.3% of children under 5, 272 per 100,000 peopleZimbabwe: 23.7% of children under 5, 203 per 100,000 peopleBDIESTGTMKIRMNGNERPHLPNGPOLTLSTON

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.5413.2e-13156
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.7241.4e-26156
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.3263.6e-5156
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.4812.5e-10156

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 156 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: +0.215 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.279 (without PNG) to +0.425 (without KIR). 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: KIR (+0.100).

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 & Pacific26+0.30
Europe & Central Asia32+0.35
Latin America & Caribbean25-0.03
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan20+0.50
Sub-Saharan Africa46+0.30

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+0.23
Middle third52+0.49
Richest third52+0.55

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+0.29
Muslims48+0.40

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+0.19
Never a European colony21+0.05
Spain18+0.19
United Kingdom52+0.36

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 = +0.440 after dropping 11 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.

The link shows up within countries over time (r = +0.154) but mostly disappears in year-to-year changes (r = +0.020). That points to slow trends particular to each country, not the two measures moving together from year to year.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.326for comparison
Within countries+0.392each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.154q = 0.038 · 161 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.020q = 0.671
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.

4,002 country-years (one country in one year), 161 countries, 2000–2024, about 25 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 9% for Child stunting, 18% for Tuberculosis incidence. 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 Tuberculosis incidence trails Child stunting →lag -10: r = 0.140 (n = 2,388)lag -9: r = 0.152 (n = 2,553)lag -8: r = 0.160 (n = 2,714)lag -7: r = 0.165 (n = 2,875)lag -6: r = 0.160 (n = 3,036)lag -5: r = 0.163 (n = 3,197)lag -4: r = 0.165 (n = 3,358)lag -3: r = 0.165 (n = 3,519)lag -2: r = 0.162 (n = 3,680)lag -1: r = 0.158 (n = 3,841)lag +0: r = 0.154 (n = 4,002)lag +1: r = 0.169 (n = 3,845)lag +2: r = 0.173 (n = 3,688)lag +3: r = 0.169 (n = 3,530)lag +4: r = 0.169 (n = 3,372)lag +5: r = 0.165 (n = 3,214)lag +6: r = 0.158 (n = 3,054)lag +7: r = 0.149 (n = 2,894)lag +8: r = 0.139 (n = 2,734)lag +9: r = 0.126 (n = 2,574)lag +10: r = 0.111 (n = 2,414)

Same year (lag 0): +0.154. 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.

The data


% of children under 5
per 100,000 people		Years
Burundi BDI55.3%832024
Niger NER48.3%862024
Angola AGO47.7%3732024
Papua New Guinea PNG47.6%6642024
Timor-Leste TLS45.4%4962024
Guatemala GTM44.6%282024
Congo, Dem. Rep. COD44.1%3772024
Afghanistan AFG42%2032024
Central African Republic CAF38.9%4192024
Madagascar MDG38.4%2242024
Mozambique MOZ37%3612024
Ethiopia ETH35.5%1412024
Sudan SDN35.4%472024
Lesotho LSO35%5482024
Nigeria NGA33.8%2192024

World Bank, World Development Indicators
World Bank, World Development Indicators

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.

Tuberculosis incidence

Incidence of tuberculosis (per 100,000 people)

World Health Organization · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2024. 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 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Child stunting and Tuberculosis incidence

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

More links with Child stunting or Tuberculosis incidence