This section reports on four global nutrition indicators: stunting, wasting and overweight in children under 5 years of age, and anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years.
The prevalence of stunting among children under 5 years of age in the region has been considerably lower than the global estimate over the last 25 years. Estimates for 2024 (Figure 10 and Table 7) indicate that regional prevalence stood at 12.4 percent, nearly half the global estimate of 23.2 percent. Stunting prevalence decreased from the early 2000s until 2022 at both the regional and subregional levels; however, slight increases have been observed from 2022 to 2024. At the subregional level, Mesoamerica recorded a prevalence (17.2 percent) above the regional estimate, while South America (9.9 percent) and the Caribbean (12.2 percent) reported lower prevalence levels.
In 2024, stunting affected an estimated 5.8 million children under 5 years of age in LAC. Of these, 400 000 lived in the Caribbean, 2.6 million in Mesoamerica, and 2.8 million in South America.3 3 UNICEF, WHO & World Bank. 2025. Levels and trends in child malnutrition: UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Group Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates. Key findings of the 2025 edition. New York, USA, Geneva, Switzerland and Washington, DC. [Cited 4 April 2025]. https://data.unicef.org/resources/JME
| 2000 | 2010 | 2012 | 2015 | 2020 | 2022 | 2024 | |
| World | 33.1 | 27.9 | 26.4 | 24.6 | 22.4 | 22.6 | 23.2 |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 18.0 | 13.6 | 12.8 | 12.3 | 11.9 | 12.1 | 12.4 |
| Caribbean | 15.2 | 13.3 | 12.9 | 12.6 | 12.0 | 12.0 | 12.2 |
| Mesoamerica | 25.3 | 19.2 | 18.1 | 17.5 | 17.0 | 17.1 | 17.2 |
| South America | 14.9 | 10.9 | 10.1 | 9.6 | 9.3 | 9.6 | 9.9 |
Among the countries in the region with available stunting data (26 in total), 20 recorded reductions in prevalence between 2012 and 2024. The largest declines over this period were observed in the Plurinational State of Bolivia (9.3 percentage points), Guyana (7.7 percentage points) and Peru (7.5 percentage points). Around one third of countries with available data are on track to achieve the WHA 2030 stunting target, which aims for a 40 percent reduction in the number of children under 5 years of age who are stunted compared with the 2012 baseline.
