Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Expanding aid and education for women is essential to reducing hunger in the world’s most impoverished regions, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Countries that scored worst on the group’s Global Hunger Index tend to have the greatest gender inequality, the institute said today as it released this year’s rankings. With women responsible for up to 80 percent of African food production, gender equality equals food security, the institute said.

If women are not included in efforts to improve developing-world agriculture, “there will be hardly any chance to make significant progress” in alleviating world hunger, Joachim von Braun, the director general of the Washington-based institute, told reporters at a conference in Des Moines, Iowa.

Improvements in women’s equality can affect hunger levels in as little as five years, as girls gain educational opportunities and economic development creates new jobs for females, von Braun said.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, where political crises and lower metals prices have eroded national income, ranked at the bottom of the Hunger Index. The country, formerly known as Zaire, has the world’s worst combination of child malnutrition, youth mortality and calorie deficiency, the institute said.

1 Billion Hungry

Burundi, Congo’s neighbor to the east, has the second- worst hunger problem, followed by Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Chad and Ethiopia, the institute said. Worldwide, the number of people going hungry each day will top 1 billion for the first time this year as the global economic crisis, which followed a jump in food prices last year, left less money available for nutrition needs, according to the United Nations.

“The crises have significantly reduced purchasing power and income-earning opportunities for poor people, who spend up to 70 percent of their income on food,” Klaus von Grebmer, the lead author of the report, said in the institute’s statement.

The bottom eight countries in the study, which focused on the 84 developing-world nations, are all in sub-Saharan Africa, with Haiti having the lowest ranking on the Hunger Index among countries outside that region. The most progress in reducing hunger since 1990 has been in Southeast Asia, Latin America and parts of the Middle East, according to the research.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Bjerga in Washington at abjerga@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 14, 2009 14:59 EDT