WHO Global Adult Underweight Prevalence Estimates

World Health Organization data tracks the proportion of adults with a body mass index (BMI) less than 18.5 kg/m². The dataset provides a crude estimate of underweight prevalence, likely formatted as a time series. It serves as a key public health indicator for monitoring nutritional status and health outcomes globally.

Use Cases

• Tracking national underweight prevalence trends over time based on BMI thresholds.
• Comparing adult nutritional status across different populations using WHO standardized metrics.
• Assessing the impact of health crises or interventions on population-level nutrition indicators.
• Modeling the relationship between underweight prevalence and other socioeconomic or health variables.

Strengths

• Produced by the World Health Organization, an authoritative global health institution.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-3.0-IGO license, facilitating reuse.
• Cross-platform presence on HDX indicates recognized importance and utility.

Limitations

• Column names and exact data structure are not specified in the provided metadata.
• The listed last updated date of 2026-05-31 is in the future, suggesting a metadata error or placeholder.
• Specific temporal coverage, row counts, and geographic granularity are unknown.

Provenance

Source

World Health Organization (WHO)

Freshness

Last updated date listed as 2026-05-31 (a future date, indicating potential metadata error).

Geography

Global