Malnutrition in the OIC Member

Countries: A Trap for Poverty

COMCEC

than expected stunting prevalence, including Iran, Tunisia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan,

Guyana, the Gambia and Uzbekistan. It is interesting to note the over-representation of Central

Asian countries in this list.

Figure 15: Stunting and Poverty Rate, OICcountries

Source: Authors' calculations based on theJoint Malnutrition Estimatesfrom UNICEF, WHOand the World Bank

(2016) and the World Bank Indicators (World Bank 2016). For each country, the most recentyearfor which

malnutrition and poverty data exist is used.

The correlation between stunting and poverty in OIC, is however just over half as the one that

exist in non-OIC countries. Among the latter, a 10 percentage point increase in poverty is

associated with a 5.7 percentage point increase in stunting rate

hows this

relationship, and it is clear that the slope of the red line (the fitted relationship) is now steeper

than it was i

t is particularly salient that in the non-OIC world, there are no very

poor countries with low stunting rates; contrary to what is seen for OIC (e.g. the Gambia,

Uzbekistan).