Indicator 2.2.2 Prevalence of malnutrition (weight for height >+2 or <-2 standard deviation from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards) among children under 5 years of age, by type (wasting and overweight)

Prevalence of malnutrition (weight for height >+2 or <-2 standard deviation from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards) for children aged 4 by type (wasting and overweight) and prevalence of underweight, overweight, and obesity for children aged 4 to 5 years using BMI classifications

Prevalence of malnutrition based on WHO Child Growth Standards is reported under the WHO Child Growth Standards series. Prevalence of malnutrition based on BMI classification data is reported under the BMI classifcations series.

England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland

Percentage (%)

The prevalence of undernourishment is an estimate of the proportion of the population whose habitual food consumption is insufficient to provide the dietary energy levels that are required to maintain a normal active and healthy life. It is expressed as a percentage.

BMI is defined as weight (in kg) divided by height squared (in m2).

For England, Scotland, and Wales, BMI classifications are defined using the British 1990 Growth Reference where underweight includes those with a BMI less than or equal to the 2nd centile, overweight includes those with a BMI of greater than or equal to the 85th and less than the 95th centile and obesity includes those with a BMI greater than or equal to the 95th centile. The exception is Wales who categorises underweight as those with a BMI less than (but not equal to) the 2nd centile.

For Northern Ireland, BMI classifications are defined using the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) guidelines. For more information, please refer to the original source links in the Sources tab.

Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) is the official measure of relative deprivation. It is expressed either in deciles (1 to 10) or quintiles (1 to 5), with 1 representing the most deprived category. It is calculated slightly differently between the different UK nations, so direct comparisons are not advised. For more details refer to the original source links in the Sources tab.

Sex; Index of Multiple Deprivation; Ethnicity; Rural or Urban classification. The latter is only available for the data which uses the WHO Child Growth Standards from academic year 2013 to 2014.

For BMI classifications, source data may contain additional disaggregations (e.g., by health board) that are not displayed on this page but can be found via the source links.

The analysis for the data using the WHO Child Growth Standards was done by running the NCMP data through a bespoke R package 'anthro, developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) specifically for supplying Sustainable Development Goals related figures.

The prevalence represents percentage from the unweighted sample size.

The dataset variables used for the analysis were age in months, height, sex, weight, index of multiple deprivation (originally deciles, and recoded into quintiles), ethnic group, and rural/urban indicator (recoded into a binary classification).

For Wales BMI classification series, percentage of obese was subtracted from percentage of overweight or obese to provide the figure for percentage of overweight that is reported here.

For Northern Ireland BMI classification series, percentage of obese was subtracted from percentage of overweight and obese to provide the figure for percentage of overweight that is reported here.

No other calculations were performed in the data acquisition of BMI classifications data as appropriate data was readily available in the final format specified by this indicator. For insight into the details of potential calculations please refer to the original source metadata or source contact.

For Northern Ireland, only data from the past 5 years are available via the source link. However, older data and data for some disaggregations not available via the source link (i.e., sex and some IMD quintiles) can be requested directly from Department of Health Northern Ireland using the relevant contact details under the Sources tab.

This indicator is being used as an approximation of the UN SDG Indicator. Where possible, we will work to identify or develop UK data to meet the global indicator specification. This indicator has not been identified in collaboration with topic experts.