COMCEC
Malnutrition in the OIC Member
Countries: A Trap for Poverty
This analysis then confirms that under-nutrition is a feature of under-development in OIC, as
in the rest of the world. The strength of this association is however lower in OIC, as evidenced
by the lack of association between wasting and poverty and by the smaller magnitude of the
correlation between stunting and poverty in OIC than elsewhere.
Holding other factors constant, a typical OIC country that would reduce its poverty rate from a
level corresponding to the 75th percentile (corresponding to a poverty rate of 50%) to that of
the 25th percentile (corresponding to a poverty rate of 4.7%) of the poverty distribution
would be expected to reduce stunting by 13 percentage point. This is a substantial decline that
corresponds to almost half of the average level of stunting in the OIC sample. However, this
also shows that stunting cannot be reduced to its poverty dimension, especially in the OIC
group. Even by completely eradicating poverty, our calculations show that the typical OIC
country would still be expected to have a stunting rate of 21%. In the non-OIC world, the
association between poverty and stunting is stronger, and thus an average country that would
eradicate poverty would be expected to have a stunting prevalence of 13% only.
A second take-away is that over-nutrition is both a feature of under-development and
economic prosperity in OIC. Countries with extreme levels of poverty experience more
overweight issues than countries with average levels of poverty, something that is not
observed outside of OIC. In addition, once OIC countries reduce poverty levels below 41% (or
move above the threshold of 6,900 in 2011 US dollars), economic development is accompanied
with rising overweight rates at a pace that is faster than in non-OIC countries.
Finally, it is worth stressing that these associations between malnutrition and poverty are not
the result of simple processes. They reflect both the role poverty reduction plays in
diminishing malnutrition (especially under-nutrition) and the reverse role malnutrition
reduction plays in fostering economic development. In addition, related factors, such as
institutional quality or the influence of the health and education sectors are likely to exert an
impact on both malnutrition and poverty.
2.4. Risk Factors of Malnutrition in the OIC Member Countries
The previous section established that OIC countries are more affected by malnutrition (in all
its forms) than non-OIC countries, even when focusing on developing countries. It also
established that whereas malnutrition and poverty are related, the strength of this association
is lower in OICwhen it comes to under-nutrition (and is higher for over-nutrition) than in non-
OIC countries.
In what follows, the levels of key risk factors of malnutrition, as identified by the UNICEF
framework, are described and compared between OIC and non-OIC countries. Risk factors
include basic causes (GDP per capita, inequality, education, rainfall, gender equality),
underlying causes (access to sanitation and water, healthcare availability) and immediate
causes (food deficit, disease).
resents the pairwise comparisons between the mean of each variable in OIC countries
and in non-OIC countries. It also distinguishes between comparisons made on all countries and
those made when excluding high income countries. For each comparison, we have retrieved
the p-value deriving from a statistical test of equality of means. We summarise this information
through the stars that are associated with each difference. One star indicates that the p-value
lies between 5% and 10%, two stars that the p-value lies between 1% and 5%, and three stars
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