The sharpest reversals of fortune are found in Indonesia. In areas where adults are reduced to eating just one meal a day, babies are fed little more than flavored cassava root or a thin gruel. The results are predictable but no less distressing. Now our own children look just like that. Public health expert Agus Zulkarnain reckons as many as 41,000 babies in the province are suffering from marasmus - a condition caused by calorie and protein deficiency, typically producing gaunt features and distended bellies.
Many officials accept that moderate malnutrition is now widespread across Indonesia.
This can take insidious forms. Anemic children do not look very different from others, but they often become lethargic and have a reduced capacity for learning. In Thailand, the national education commission estimates at least 130,000 youngsters have dropped out of school because of the effects of the downturn. Often education is disrupted because of reverse migration. Increasing numbers of workers are moving back to their home provinces as construction jobs and other work disappear in the cities.