Of all our global promises for development that are on track to fail by 2030—and there are many—one of the most tragic and infuriating is our limited progress on ending global malnutrition. Yet, achieving a drastic reduction in hunger is certainly within our grasp.

We measure chronic malnutrition in so-called stunting, meaning children who are so chronically underfed they are much shorter than their peers of the same age.

The rich world has reduced stunting to very low levels. China has achieved a drop to rich-country levels over the past 30 years. Global stunting has almost halved since 1990, but internationally more than one-in-five children are still stunted.

Stunting decreases children’s survival chances, with 2.7 million children globally dying yearly from malnutrition. Stunted children also develop more poorly and become less productive with a lower income over their lifespan. Economists estimate the annual global cost of malnutrition to be $1 trillion.

This year, we are at halftime of the world’s Sustainable Development Goals, including promises on nutrition and everything else to be achieved by 2030. Yet, we are far from halfway. Based on trends before COVID-19, we will only achieve the goal of zero hunger in the year 2116, 86 years late.

This global failure has motivated my think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, to work with some of the world’s best economists to identify which promises should be prioritized to have the greatest impact.

Their new, peer-reviewed research shows one of the smartest approaches to addressing malnutrition is focusing on pregnant women. For a small cost, they can be provided with micronutrients that will feed their growing fetus better and avoid some malnutrition later.

Most governments already follow WHO recommendations and provide pregnant women with iron and folic acid supplementation to prevent anemia in the mother and neural tube defects in the newborn. Switching to a pill that includes more micronutrients would only require some minor education and training in the healthcare sector, and it would add only a small cost to the new pills that governments hand out.

Those new pills are already being mass-produced and contain 13 vitamins and minerals beyond iron and folic acid, including vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B12, D, and E, plus zinc, copper, iodine, and selenium. They cost so little that for 180 days, the additional cost for each mother is just over a dollar. Helping 36 million women in low- and lower-middle-income countries in a year with these pills, along with healthcare training and education, would cost just $84 million in total.

Multi-micronutrient supplements would avoid about 7 percent of almost 700,000 stillbirths, 21 percent of all low-birth weights, and 5 percent of all preterm births yearly. Avoiding low birthweight and preterm birth means children would be less likely to become malnourished. It means 1.6 million children would avoid becoming stunted yearly, making them more productive as adults. In economic terms, they would become so much better off that the benefits add up to $3 billion in today’s dollars. Thus, each dollar spent would deliver an astounding benefit worth 38 times the cost.

Calcium tablets are delivered separately from other micronutrients since the tablets are quite large, and two to three are needed every day for the last 20 weeks of pregnancy. The cost is $6 per pregnancy or $216 million for the 36 million pregnant women who currently take iron and folic acid. That would reduce the number of stillbirths by almost twice as much as multi-micronutrients, and it would avoid an additional 1.1 million early births and births of low birthweight.

Further, calcium also reduces pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, the rare but serious condition where high blood pressure results in seizures during pregnancy or during birth. That means that calcium may prevent up to 8,500 maternal deaths each year. In total, the benefits of almost $4 billion are 19 times larger than the costs.

Micronutrient supplementation for pregnant women is a fantastic policy but not a silver bullet. The economists identify several other very efficient policies. Helping parents in lower-income countries to feed their children better is costly, but also improves the children’s nutrition. The investment can deliver benefits worth 16 times the cost. We should also invest much more in research to improve agricultural yields. That would generate more food at a lower cost, reducing malnutrition and increasing growth. Each dollar would deliver a remarkable $33 of social benefits.

Investing more in pregnant mothers’ nutritional support turns out to be one of the most efficient ways to make progress on sustainable development. We owe it to the world to invest in such smart policies first.