Table 4.

Prevalence and number (in millions) of disadvantaged children under 5 years by region in 2004

	Population younger than 5 years*	Percentage living in poverty*†‡	Number living in poverty	Percentage stunted†‡§	Number	Percentage stunted, living in poverty or both¶	Number stunted, living in poverty or both¶
Sub-Saharan Africa	117·0	46%	54·3	37%	43·7	61%	70·9
Middle east and north Africa	44·1	4%	1·6	21%	9·1	22%	9·9
South Asia	169·3	27%	46·3	39%	65·6	52%	88·8
East Asia and Pacific	145·7	11%	16·6	17%	25·2	23%	33·6
Latin America and the Caribbean	56·5	10%	5·9	14%	7·9	19%	10·8
Central and eastern Europe	26·4	4%	1·0	16%	4·2	18%	4·7
Developing countries	559·1	22%	125·6	28%	155·7	39%	218·7

^*Population and poverty source data from UNICEF State of the World's Children, 2006.⁷⁵

^†Where data missing, regional averages were used for percentage living in poverty and percentage stunted.

^‡We extrapolated poverty figures to 2004 based on findings from Chen and Ravallion¹³² that, in the 1990s and early 2000s, decline in absolute poverty (less than US$1 per day) was stagnant in all developing regions except east Asia and south Asia. In east Asia, the decline was levelling off and could be captured accurately by a non-linear regression equation (R²=93%); in south Asia the decline could be accurately captured by a linear equation (R²=99%). We used their equations¹³² to estimate the expected poverty figures for east Asia and Pacific and south Asia for each country in these regions in the latest years with available poverty data, and then calculated the difference between the expected and observed figures for each country. We added this country-level difference to the regional figure in 2004 projected by Chen and Ravallion's equations to obtain the projected poverty level in 2004 for each country. We used the observed poverty figures as the 2004 estimates for other developing countries. We projected stunting figures for every country except those in the central and eastern Europe region to 2004 based on sub-regional linear trends estimated by de Onis, et al.¹³³ de Onis, et al, did not include the central and eastern Europe region in their analysis. Poverty reduction was stagnant in the 1990s and early 2000s¹³² in central and eastern Europe. We therefore assume that for countries in this region there has been no change in stunting prevalence in the period concerned.³

^§Stunting source data taken from WHO Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition.⁷⁶

^¶Based on estimate that prevalence of stunting among children in poverty is 50%.