This archive report was first published on 8 July 2020.
Published on July 8, 2020, a report highlights the economic consequences of malnutrition in developing countries, with businesses facing a hidden penalty of up to $850 billion a year.
Malnutrition not only affects the health of populations but also reduces their resilience to risks such as infectious disease outbreaks and extreme climate events. It also causes a reduction in productivity and earnings, resulting in significant economic losses for businesses.
Lead researcher Laura Wellesley, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, emphasized that the costs and risks of malnutrition to companies have remained under the radar. She called for governments and businesses to focus on nutrition as part of recovery efforts, particularly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The report, compiled with the Vivid Economics group, defined malnutrition as both undernutrition and overnutrition, encompassing conditions from stunting and anaemia to being overweight and obese. In developing nations, researchers estimated that the direct costs of productivity loss would total between $130 billion and $850 billion a year, equivalent to between 0.4 per cent and 2.9 percent of the combined gross domestic product of those countries.
According to the 2020 Global Nutrition Report, around one in nine people globally are hungry or undernourished, while one in three people are overweight or obese. Almost a quarter of children under five are stunted. The report stressed that action to tackle malnutrition is in businesses' best interests, as it can reduce the reduction in productivity associated with staff ill-health and limits to workers' physical and cognitive capacity.
Philip Alston, the former United Nations envoy on extreme poverty and human rights, slammed the international community for fostering a misleading narrative that global poverty is being eradicated when in fact it is rising. He warned that the pandemic is expected to push hundreds of millions into unemployment and poverty, while increasing the number at risk of acute hunger by more than 250 million.
