Countries With the Highest Child Stunting

Every country with a figure for child stunting, ranked from highest to lowest. The top three are Burundi (55.3%), Niger (48.3%) and Eritrea (48%). The middle country of the 162 has 11.7%.

What this measures

Prevalence of stunting, height for age, modelled estimate (% of children under 5). Source: UNICEF, WHO and World Bank Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates. For this measure, higher is worse.

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.

This measure mostly follows how rich a country is, so this ranking is close to a ranking by national income. Each country’s page also ranks it against countries with similar incomes, which is often the fairer comparison.

The full ranking

Each country’s latest figure, from 2024–2024. The year beside each value says when it was measured.

More on child stunting

• Countries With the Lowest Child Stunting
• Child stunting by country: trend over time and what it goes with

Related rankings

• Countries With the Highest Life Expectancy
• Countries With the Highest Infant Mortality
• Countries With the Highest Under-5 Mortality
• Countries With the Highest Health Spending
• Countries With the Highest Suicide Rates
• Countries With the Highest Hospital Beds
• Countries With the Highest Basic Water Access
• Countries With the Highest Basic Sanitation

A ranking describes countries, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All country rankings.