World hunger is down by 200 million since 1990

Despite the world's population growth, global hunger has declined in the last 25 years, according to a U.N. report released Wednesday.

In 1990, about one billion people worldwide were declared hungry, compared with 795 million — about one in every nine people — today. The U.N. also found that of the 129 nations it monitored, 72 countries had met the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target of halving their percentages of hungry people.

East Asia, Southeast and Central Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean saw the most progress in hunger elimination, The New York Times reports. The U.N. credits the reduced numbers to economic growth and stable political conditions.

"The near-achievement of the MDG hunger targets shows us that we can indeed eliminate the scourge of hunger in our lifetime," Food and Agriculture Organization director general Jose Graziano da Silva told the Times.