Poverty, Nutrition and Mortality: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The contemporary world continues to register substantial progress in economic growth, abundance in production of food grains, and profound breakthroughs in medical technology and knowledge on diseases and healthcare. These are no mean achievements and there are reasons to further them, as they play important role in both reducing poverty and hunger, and improving the health and nutritional status of the population. Despite this progress and achievement, a number of regressive aspects also continue to plague many parts of the world and blight the lives of men and women in various ways. The manifestation and intensity of these aspects varies between regions and between countries within regions. Poverty, hunger, malnutrition and mortality are so inexorably intertwined that they reinforce each other and hinder human development and economic growth. Understanding the relationship between poverty, nutrition and mortality is a complex one and this relationship vary according to the social, economic and cultural environment. In order to further our knowledge on these important issues, a seminar titled “The Impact of Mortality as Both a Determinant and a Consequence of Poverty and Hunger: A Contribution to Achieving the First Millennium Development Goal (Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger)” was held between February 23 and 25, 2005 in Trivandrum, India. The seminar was organised jointly by CICRED and the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) with financial support from UNFPA This book presents some of the papers offered at that conference with additional papers ‘invited’ in order to cover other regions and to fill the gap in certain issues. This volume covers Asia, the Pacific and Africa where nearly 90 percent of the world’s hungry people live. About 2 out of 5 under-five deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa and almost half of the world’s undernourished children live in South Asia.

Keywords: poverty, nutrition, mortality, Asia, Pacific, Africa