World obesity data · made simple
About 1 in 6 adults on Earth live with obesity.
That’s 16.4% of all adults in 2024 — roughly 944 million people. In 1980 it was 5.0%, or about 130 million. Here’s what the numbers say, country by country, told simply.
Rates: WHO estimates for adults 18+. People counts: WHO rate × UN population estimate. How we calculate
If the world were 100 adults…
Based on WHO estimates for 2024.
- 16 living with obesity (BMI 30+) (16.4%)
- 29 overweight (BMI 25 to 30) (28.8%)
- 48 in the healthy weight range (48.1%)
- 7 underweight (BMI under 18.5) (6.7%)
Source: WHO Global Health Observatory
The big picture
Four numbers to know
16%
of adults worldwide live with obesity (2024)
Source: WHO Global Health Observatory
45%
of adults are overweight or have obesity (2024)
Source: WHO Global Health Observatory
8%
of children and teens (5–19) live with obesity (2024)
Up from 1.1% in 1980.
Source: WHO Global Health Observatory
7%
of adults are underweight (2024) — the other side of malnutrition
Source: WHO Global Health Observatory
Where
A world map of adult obesity
Adults with obesity, 2024
What this meansOf WHO’s six world regions, the Americas has the highest share of adults with obesity (34.4%) and South-East Asia the lowest (8.3%).
- under 5%
- 5–10%
- 10–20%
- 20–30%
- 30–40%
- 40% or more
- no estimate
Adults (18+) living with obesity (BMI 30 or more), age-standardized. Some small countries are too small to see on the map — every country is listed on the countries page.
Source: WHO Global Health Observatory.
When
How we got here
World: adults and children with obesity, 1980–2024
What this meansAdults went from 5.0% to 16.4%. Children and teens went from 1.1% to 8.2% — a smaller share, but it grew about 7 times over.
- Adults 18+
- Ages 5–19
Shaded bands show WHO’s 95% uncertainty range.
Source: WHO Global Health Observatory.
Straight from the experts
What health organisations say
2.5 billion
adults were overweight in 2022, and 890 million of them were living with obesity.
160 million
children and teens aged 5–19 were living with obesity in 2022, up from 31 million in 1990.
3.7 million
deaths from noncommunicable diseases in 2021 were caused by higher-than-optimal BMI, WHO estimates.
US$3 trillion
a year — the predicted global cost of overweight and obesity by 2030, rising to more than US$18 trillion by 2060.
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