In countries with steep population growth curves, food and water shortages are increasingly a problem. It is estimated that nearly a billion people, most of them women and children, around the world are chronically malnourished.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) find that the proportion of malnourished families in developing countries has decreased from 36 to 20%. On the other hand, International Food Policy Research Institute finds that the number of malnourished children throughout the developing world increased from 166 million to 188 million between 1975 and 1990.