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Poverty and famines

'Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.' So begins Professor Amartya Sen's ground-breaking study on famine published in 1981.

This book, written for the World Employment Programme of the International Labour Organization, presents four case studies: the Great Bengal Famine (1943), the Ethiopian famines (1972-75), the famines in the Sahel region of Africa (Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger and Chad, during the early 1970s) and the Bangladesh famine (1974). The book shows that famines happen not only because of lack of food, but because of inequalities in the ways food is distributed. The book examines what determines the distribution of food between different groups in society.

Sen argues that the traditional analysis of famine focused on food supply is wrong and therefore misleading for policy. He develops an alternative 'entitlements' approach, based on forms of ownership and exchange. This approach focuses on how people can buy food or otherwise get access to it. In the four case studies, Sen identifies a number of factors - including unemployment, falling wages and rising food prices - which resulted in some people not having access to enough food.

Sen also critically examines concepts and measurements of poverty. Poor people cannot be lumped together as a single group: a more sophisticated analysis of poverty is necessary. Distributional issues, Sen argues, are critical to our understanding of both poverty and the causes of famine. It is usually people from the poorer socio-economic groups who suffer hunger during crises.

The book's key findings include:

• Some of the worst famines have taken place with no significant decline in the country's overall food supply.
• During the Bengal famine of 1943, when millions of people died from starvation, food output was not lower than in 1941 when there was no famine.
• Even where famines have involved lower overall food supply, other factors determine which groups starve and which have access to food.
• People from different occupational groups, for example, farm workers and small land-owning cultivators, get access to food in contrasting ways and so are affected differently by famines.

Famines are broadly economic problems. The entitlements approach helps to explain why it is not unusual for people to die of famine in a country which exports food, as was the case to some degree in Wollo, Ethiopia in 1973 and in Bangladesh in 1974. The entitlements approach provides a framework for future work on the cause and prevention of famines.

The implications of this research include:

• Understanding why some groups have access to food while others starve is essential for formulating effective famine policies (prevention and response).
• The entitlements approach provides a more detailed and nuanced picture of poverty; this helps policymakers design more effective poverty reduction policies.
• The market cannot be relied upon to distribute food during famines.
• Social protection measures, such as income support or employment schemes, can help to prevent famine.

Contributor:
Amartya Sen

Further Information
Shelley Rich
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer 205, North Yard
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA
Tel +1 617 4951871
Fax +1 617 4965942
Email slrich@fas.harvard.edu

id21
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton, BN1 9RE
Tel +44 (0)1273 877998
Fax +44 (0)1273 621202
Email id21classics@ids.ac.uk

Source(s)
'Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation', Oxford University Press: Oxford by Amartya Sen, 1981

ATHENS subscribers can access the full-text article here

July 2007

See also
Prof. Amartya Kumar Sen (1933 - ): A brief biography and further links to his work, from Wikipedia

Amartya Sen: An autobiography on the official website of the Nobel Foundation

Amartya Sen: Information on the Harvard University website

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