Hunger has consistently declined
in the 20th century.
According to the United
Nations, the number of malnourished people increased from 540 million
in 1979/81 to 580 million in 1989/1990. Since world population grew by
23 percent during the same period, the percentage of people hungry actually
declined during this period.
What this means is
more than 90 percent of all people alive today receive enough food. Of
those who don’t, according to the UN and World Bank, 90 percent of
them are within 10 percent of their needed calorie total.
The problem of hunger
today is not lack of food, but interference with distribution of food.
In Africa, for example, which has experienced the worst famines in the
last quarter of the 20th century, people starved not because there wasn’t
enough food, but because of the actions taken by governments there to
keep food out of the hands of people.
One of the best accomplishments
of the 20th century is the near-eradication of famine.
Famine caused 20 to 25 million deaths in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century. For today’s larger population, a comparable
number of famine deaths for the current 1975-2000 quarter of the century
would be about 50 million people, yet the famine death toll for 1975-2000
is likely to be 2 million or fewer (Bailey 1995, p. 55).