Introduction:

Children under five years of age living in poor areas and with low availability of healthy food have a higher risk of undernutrition-related mortality. However, this relationship has not been well established among older adults.

Objective:

To analyse socioeconomic inequality trends related to undernutrition mortality in children under five years of age and adults over 60 in Colombian municipalities during 2003-2009 and 2010-2016.

Materials and methods:

We conducted an ecological study of trends between 2003 and 2016. The study population consisted of children under five years of age and adults over 60 residing in the Colombian municipalities during the study period. We estimated smoothed and standardized mortality rates by fitting a hierarchical Bayesian model and explored their relationship with five socioeconomic area-level variables.

Results:

In most of the municipalities, undernutrition-related mortality was three times higher in older adults compared to children. Moreover, the difference in the risk of undernutrition-related mortality between municipalities showed a marked reduction. Finally, the poor and less developed municipalities had higher rates of undernutrition-related mortality in children; conversely, wealthier territories had higher rates in older adults.

Conclusions:

Although in most of the municipalities the mortality rates due to undernutrition in children under five and older adults have decreased, their socioeconomic conditions influence in different ways the risk of mortality for these two populations so there is the need to develop age-specific strategies to close social gaps considering the structural conditions of the areas.

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