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World Bank · Health

Prevalence of wasting, weight for height

Prevalence of wasting is the proportion of children under age 5 whose weight for height is more than two standard deviations below the median for the international reference population ages 0-59 months.

Coverage
164 of 238 countries
Latest data
2024
Series
164
Unit
percent
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Retrieved
2026-11-07
Indicator
prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height
Interva ID
worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height

Recency

current

data to 2024; catalog to 2025

Provenance

6 steps

as the publisher declares it

Versions

1

catalog snapshots

Citation

BibTeX + CSL

versioned permalink

Quality profile

This profile describes what Interva can measure in the data. It does not claim the dataset is accurate, complete, or suitable for a particular use.

Recency

100%

Latest observation is 2024; the catalog broadly reports to 2025, so this data is 1 year(s) behind (current).

Method: Compares the dataset's latest non-projected period with the year most datasets in the catalog end in. Up to 2 years behind is current — annual data is routinely published a year or two late — and more than 5 is stale. Measured from the data, not from when Interva last crawled it.

Temporal completeness

27%

148 of 164 series skip at least one year inside their own span; the median series reports 27% of its years.

Method: Per series, years present divided by years from its first to its last observation; the median across series is reported. Annual periods are assumed, which holds for every series in the catalog today.

Geographic coverage

Measured

Covers 164 of the 238 countries in the catalog.

Method: Counts distinct geographies with at least one observation. Not scored: a regional dataset covering its region completely is not deficient for omitting the rest of the world.

History depth

Measured

The median series has 6 observations; the earliest begins in 1983.

Method: Counts non-projected observations per series. Not scored: a long history is useful for trend work and irrelevant for a cross-section.

Revisions

Measured

No observation has been restated in any vintage Interva has recorded.

Method: Counts values the publisher changed between Interva's publishes. Not scored: revising estimates is ordinary and often a sign of care, and the count is here so a reader citing a figure knows whether it moves.

Schema conformity

Not assessed

No declared schema or validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Validity

Not assessed

No field-level validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Consistency

Not assessed

Cross-series consistency rules are not defined yet. The obvious first one — whether two publishers measuring one concept agree within a stated tolerance — is a candidate.

2 scored from the data, 3 described without a score, 3 not assessed. Pipeline integrity: all 5 checks pass. Assessed 2026-11-07.

By country

Prevalence of wasting, weight for height for each of the 164 countries it covers, with the full history.

Latest observations

CountryPeriodValueUnit
Burundi20247.80percent
Ecuador20240.70percent
Lesotho20241.60percent
Mali20245.40percent
Sri Lanka20249.30percent
Zimbabwe20245.10percent
Azerbaijan20233.50percent
Belarus20231.30percent
Belgium20230.80percent
Bhutan20235.10percent

Provenance

Who produced these figures, as World Bank declares it — not inferred, and each line says which published field it was read from.

  1. Produced by

    UNICEF

    UNICEF, WHO, World Bank: Joint child Malnutrition Estimates (JME). Aggregation is based on UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank harmonized dataset (adjusted, comparable data) and methodology., UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), note: Aggregation is based on UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank harmonized dataset (adjusted, comparable data) and methodology

    declared by worldbank in sourceOrganization

    World Health Organization

    World Health Organization (WHO), note: Joint child Malnutrition Estimates (JME)

    declared by worldbank in sourceOrganization

    Not named — the declaration is kept verbatim

    Aggregation is based on UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank harmonized dataset (adjusted, comparable data) and methodology

    declared by worldbank in sourceOrganization

    World Bank

    World Bank (WB), note: Joint child Malnutrition Estimates (JME)

    declared by worldbank in sourceOrganization

    Not named — the declaration is kept verbatim

    Aggregation is based on UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank harmonized dataset (adjusted, comparable data) and methodology

    declared by worldbank in sourceOrganization

  2. Read from

    World Bank

    World Development Indicators

    declared by worldbank in source

Versions

A vintage is a dated publish of the catalog. The current entry is a catalog snapshot; checksums are not recorded yet and are shown as such.

  • CurrentCurrent catalog snapshotchecksum not recorded

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Citation

Version: catalog snapshot 2026-11-07. The record labels this as a catalog snapshot because immutable dataset releases are not stored yet.

World Bank (2026). Prevalence of wasting, weight for height. Interva. https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height (accessed 2026-11-07). catalog snapshot 2026-11-07.

BibTeX
@misc{interva-worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height,
  title        = {Prevalence of wasting, weight for height},
  author       = {World Bank},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height}},
  note         = {Interva dataset worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height; catalog snapshot 2026-11-07},
  urldate      = {2026-11-07}
}

DOI: not assigned (not assigned). The permalink is versioned by catalog snapshot; a stable dataset DOI is a later step.

API access

Every fact on this page is available from the API.

curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height
curl -o worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height.csv https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height/download
curl "https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height/citation?accessed=YYYY-MM-DD"
curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-prevalence-of-wasting-weight-for-height/quality

Full schema: https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/docs

Open in the terminal to chart this series, compare it against other publishers, or export it with its provenance.

Prevalence of wasting, weight for height · World Bank · Interva