By the Numbers: The War on Hunger

there's actually some good news in the United Nations' new report on world hunger. At the end of the 1990s, there were 39 million fewer undernourished people in developing countries than there were a decade earlier. The bulk of the drop occurred in China, where the number of the hungry plummeted by 76 million. In India the undernourished rate fell from 25 percent to 23 percent, although the total number of the hungry increased due to population growth. Peru offers the most dramatic success. Rapid economic growth reduced the ranks of the hungry there by 6 million, or nearly 30 percent. Before, food was available but people could not afford it. "The key issue is income. There is no lack of food in the world market," says Alain de Janvry, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley.