Famines And Economics

The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The author develops the alternative method of analysis—the 'entitlement approach'—concentrating on ownership and exchange, not on food supply. The book also provides a general analysis of the characterization and measurement of poverty. Various approaches used in economics, sociology, and political theory are critically examined. The predominance of distributional issues, including distribution between different occupation groups, links up the problem of conceptualizing poverty with that of analyzing starvation.

Contains 19 papers collected from such publications as the Journal of Development Economics, Nutrition and Poverty, and Oxford Economic Papers. Organized into two sections devoted to famine analysis and case studies. The papers tend to utilize the "entitlement" approach to famine studies, which (according to one author) "concentrates on the ability of people to command food through the legal means available in [the] society." Case studies of famine causation and prevention examine countries such as Ethiopia, Bangladesh, India, the Soviet Union during collectivization, and Ireland. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Part of a major report on world hunger instigated by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, this volume deals with possible solutions to the problem of regular outbreaks of famine in various parts of the world.

Originally published in 1991. This volume explores the combination of political and economic forces that influence different levels of food supply. The book begins with a discussion of famine theories, ranging from cultural ecology to neo-Marxism. Following this survey is a series of essays by anthropologists, geographers, economists and development practitioners that explores the role of Western institutions in African famine, analyzes famine in particular countries, and documents the relationship between famine and gender. This book takes an unusually broad look at famine by including analyses of countries where hunger has rarely been studied and by examining African famine from both African and Western perspectives. Its concluding proposals for eradicating famine make innovative and provocative contributions to current global debates on food and nutrition.

Famine remains one of the worst calamities that can befall a society. Mass starvation--whether it is inflicted by drought or engineered by misguided or genocidal economic policies--devastates families, weakens the social fabric, and undermines political stability. Cormac Ó Gráda, the acclaimed author who chronicled the tragic Irish famine in books like Black '47 and Beyond, here traces the complete history of famine from the earliest records to today. Combining powerful storytelling with the latest evidence from economics and history, Ó Gráda explores the causes and profound consequences of famine over the past five millennia, from ancient Egypt to the killing fields of 1970s Cambodia, from the Great Famine of fourteenth-century Europe to the famine in Niger in 2005. He enriches our understanding of the most crucial and far-reaching aspects of famine, including the roles that population pressure, public policy, and human agency play in causing famine; how food markets can mitigate famine or make it worse; famine's long-term demographic consequences; and the successes and failures of globalized disaster relief. Ó Gráda demonstrates the central role famine has played in the economic and political histories of places as different as Ukraine under Stalin, 1940s Bengal, and Mao's China. And he examines the prospects of a world free of famine. This is the most comprehensive history of famine available, and is required reading for anyone concerned with issues of economic development and world poverty.

This book analyses the role of public action in solving the problem of hunger in the modern world and is divided into four parts: Hunger in the modern world, Famines, Undernutrition and deprivation, and Hunger and public action.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. WIDER The World Institute for Development Economics Research, established in 1984, started work in Helsinki in 1985, with the financial support of the Government of Finland. The principal purpose of the Institute is to help identify and meet the need for policy-oriented socio-economic research on pressing global and development problems and their inter-relationships. WIDER's research projects are grouped into three main themes: hunger and poverty; money, finance, and trade; and development and technological transformation. Volume II deals with famine prevention, paying particular attention to sub-Saharan Africa. The topics covered include: the problems of early warning and early action; the politics of famine prevention; the influence of market responses; the role of cash support and employment provision in protecting threatened food entitlements; and long-term issues of reduction of famine vulnerability. In addition to general analyses, the book contains a number of case studies of failures and successes in famine prevention, both in South Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa.