June 2026 “Build roads” to combat hunger was (Fritz) Shlomo’s Reutlinger’s simple, final advice, speaking to a roomfull of food experts in Virginia as he retired from a long career at the World Bank to move to Israel, where he then lived until his passing in 2019 at the age of 83.
He was born in Pforzheim, Germany, in 1925. His father, Louis Reutlinger, a veteran of World War I, sold construction materials.Hismotherwas and Elsa nee Hamburger. Shortly before Shlomo was to celebrate his bar mitzvah, the Kristallnacht pogrom broke out. That afternoon Shlomo had a dress rehearsal at the synagogue with his teacher. His teacher, however, requested to speak to his mother and warned her not to send Shlomo to school that day. Many of his family’s friends were sent to extermination camps (Buchenwald, Dachau).
Fleeing Nazi killers, Shlomo barely escaped Germany as a child after Krystalnacht, fleeing to Belgium in 1939. His younger brother Erich (shown together in the photo at right) was went with him to Belgium, where they were separated. He died in the Holocaust.
In exile in America Schlomo eventually reunited with his sister and parents in 1956 who had been interned in France and then found refuge in Cuba before
immigrating to the United States. He reunited with his parents in America eleven years later, in 1956 and he went on to earn a degree in economics, studying at Cornell University and North Carolina State University.
Dr. Reutlinger was producing granular analyses of where malnutrition occurred in the world before anybody, proving that it could be done in inspiration to future generations of food insecurity experts. The World Bank is a very large organization, but Reutlinger and Allen berg were the two individuals who pushed the World Bank to pay attention to nutrition and health outcomes among the poor.
He was known for his ability to analyze complex economic data and translate it into actionable policies that benefited developing nations. During periods of economic instability, he was instrumental in crafting recovery plans that balanced short-term relief with long-term sustainable growth. His expertise was particularly valuable in regions facing severe economic downturns, where his insights helped shape policies that provided both immediate support and a path to economic resilience.
His most influential work, the 1976 World Bank staff occasional paper Malnutrition and Poverty: Magnitude and Policy Options (co-authored with Marcelo Selowsky), provided new methodologies for estimating malnutrition across income groups and offered practical policy options centered on reaching the poor.
His equally classic World Bank report, Poverty and Hunger, co-authored with Jack van Holst Pellekaan (with assistance from Craig Lissner, Claudia Pendred, and Colleen Roberts). was a breakthrough at many levels, and the first mapping of where hunger occured most densely in the world (as shown in the map here). 
It offered a clear, useful distinction between two types of food insecurity, that has endured:
- Chronic food insecurity: Persistent inability to acquire enough food for an active, healthy life due to low incomes. In 1980, an estimated 340–730 million people (roughly one-sixth to one-third of the population in 87 developing countries, excluding China) had energy-deficient diets, depending on whether the threshold was set at 80% or 90% of FAO/WHO requirements. Absolute numbers of the hungry were shown to be increasing even as proportions slowly declined.
- Transitory food insecurity: Temporary shortfalls caused by fluctuations in production, prices, incomes, or import capacity (e.g., droughts, export-earnings volatility, or price spikes). Famines, the report stresses (drawing implicitly on Amartya Sen’s entitlement framework), often occur even when food is physically available locally—because the poor lose purchasing power or employment.
The five chapters plus annexes moved logically from diagnosis (extent, causes, projections to 1990) to national policy options for each type of insecurity, and finally to the role of international support (trade, finance, food aid coordination, and World Bank lending). Internationally, the report calls for accelerated growth-oriented adjustment lending, poverty-focused programs, better coordination of food and financial aid, multiyear food-aid commitments, and support for risk management (e.g., IMF compensatory facilities).
Food aid is seen as most useful when integrated with development rather than used purely for relief. It framed how World Bank lending can best reduce hunger. Key instruments include:
- ¤ Raising incomes of the poor through employment generation and human-capital investments.
- ¤ Targeted transfers (food rations, public works, or cash) that minimize leakage to the non-poor.
- ¤ Selective consumer price subsidies (especially on processed staples consumed by the poor) rather than blanket general subsidies that strain budgets and benefit richer groups disproportionately.
- ¤ Trade policies that lower prices for net food buyers (urban poor, landless rural households) while compensating producers where needed.
Writing with food anthropologist Judit Katona Apte (WFP, OCHA), in “The
Nutritional Impact of Food Aid: Criteria for the Selection of Cost-Effective Foods”, they coined the term “alpha-value” to reference the nutritional benefit(s) of food aid, providing the framework for studies that showed where food aid was cost efficient and where it was not efficient, compared to other interventions.
The report was refreshingly candid about administrative realities, leakage problems, and the political economy of subsidies. It incorporates household-level income variability data (e.g., from India and Nigeria) and recognizes that aggregate national food balances often mask severe intra-country a
nd intra-household insecurity.
“A Simulation Model for Evaluating Worldwide Buffer Stocks of Wheat” insurance-oriented storage rules
Reutlinger was also a strong proponent of education and capacity building. He believed that empowering local economists and policymakers was crucial for sustainable development. Throughout his career, he mentored numerous young economists, encouraging them to think critically and creatively about economic challenges. His legacy includes a generation of economists who carry forward his vision of development that is both inclusive and equitable.
His colleague at the World Bank, Hailu Mekonnen remembers: “over lunch, Shlomo and I used to talk about books. The two that come to mind are Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations” and Aristotle’s “Nichomachean Ethics,” on developing inner and outer peace and the second is on the ethically-driven good life. Shlomo pursued both. In the early 1990s, he told me that he and his wife saw, at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C., one of Hendrix Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” and recommended that my wife and I see it. [reflecting] our commitment…his and mine to promote the equality of women.”
Beyond his professional achievements, Reutlinger was remembered for his kindness and humility. Colleagues and friends alike recall his willingness to listen and his ability to inspire those around him. He had a unique talent for making complex economic concepts accessible and engaging, whether he was speaking to fellow economists or the general public.
Shlomo reutlinger retired in
At his retirement party, Reutlinger quoted Rbbi Hillel, who said “if I am not for myself, who will. If I’m only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” Upon retirement he returned to Israel with his wife, Blossom. Their two children made aliya with their
families as well.
Reutlinger passed away in 2020, in Israel. He was survive
d by his children, including Raanon Reutlinger and Elana Reutlinger, his sister Ruth, grandchildren, and extended family.
