Global hunger finally back on its downward march

World hunger is back on a downward trend, after progress began stalling in the 2010s then actually worsened around the pandemic.

The number of undernourished people has dropped year by year since 2022, after first stalling upward around the pandemic. The share globally fell to 7.8 percent in 2025, from 8.1 percent in 2024, and from 8.6 percent in 2022.

That still makes 645 million hungry people on the planet last year, but it’s a number again moving in the right direction – down 43 million from 2022.

For comparison, the undernourished share of the world in 2000 was 12.8 percent. In 1970s, it is estimated at 20 to 25 percent. And in 1950, 60 to 65 percent. So the scale of the world hunger problem has changed massively for the better. In some ways, that has made the slowdown in recent years all the more frustrating – and this recent uplift welcome.

Hunger is increasingly concentrated in Africa, where it has been rising for a decade. In the past year, the share of hungry people has eased there too, but due to population growth, the raw number of undernourished has actually kept rising somewhat.

Sources: UN Food and Agriculture Organization; Our World in Data; Ohio State University