Joint low birthweight estimates
Latest Edition (2023):
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), has released annual country, regional and global low birthweight estimates for 2000-2020.
These annual estimates make it possible to track progress and support various initiatives including the Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition (MIYCN) Targets, the Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) and the Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health.
The UNICEF-WHO Low Birthweight Estimates show that globally in 2020, 1 in 7 newborns (14.7 per cent or 19.8 million babies) were born with low birthweight. We are not on track to achieve the 2025 global target of a 30% reduction of low birthweight compared to levels in 2012.
Other available related materials and tools
Click here to open the interactive dashboard
The dashboard generates graphs and charts, using the latest joint low birthweight estimates. Prevalence estimates are presented by different country groupings (UN, UNICEF, WHO and World Bank income groups).
Download
Country estimates, as well as model input data (survey and administrative), are included in the WHO Global Nutrition Targets Tracking Tool, where progress can be assessed through baseline, current trends and projections to 2025. Countries can also explore different scenarios moving towards their national targets by means of a what-if feature.
Download the low birthweight estimates from GHO in other table formats
Methodology
In total, 2,044 data points for 158 countries were used. Key methodological differences introduced in the 2023 edition (when compared with the prior 2019 edition) were:
- Expansion beyond Demographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys to include more survey types such as National Nutrition Surveys;
- Application of a novel Bayesian approach to estimate low birthweight, with all countries and data sources included in a single model;
- Introduction of basic methods to account for differences in data quality of administrative sources using weighting and bias shifts.
Study protocol
Code repository
WHO GitHub repository
In line with WHO’s data principles to use transparent models and methods, all codes used to generate estimates for the latest round and prior rounds are openly available on WHO’s GitHub repository.
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