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What is child stunting — and how has it changed over the last 200 years? Stunting means being too short for one’s age due to chronic undernutrition and disease in early life. It’s one of the clearest markers of cumulative deprivation in childhood. 1)

Today, stunting is a core global health indicator. Globally, rates fell from roughly 47% in the mid-1980s to about 22% today. That’s major progress — but still hundreds of millions of children affected. 3)

But here’s the key question: What happened before modern surveys? How common was stunting in the 19th century? During industrialisation? In early 20th-century Europe or East Asia? Until now, we didn’t have systematic global evidence. 4)

In our new paper (BMJ Global Health), we systematically collected 923 historical growth studies covering 122 countries from 1814–2016. By harmonising height-by-age data, we reconstruct stunting patterns over two centuries. Link: doi.org/10.1136/bmjg... 5)