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Poverty and Famines

Poverty and Famines. Social World I. Some Web Sites. USDA: Food and Nutrition Service; www.usda.gov/fcs/ HungerWeb: www.brown.edu/Departments/World_Hunger_Program Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research: www.cgiar.org/. Who’s Amartya Sen?.

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Poverty and Famines

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  1. Poverty and Famines Social World I

  2. Some Web Sites • USDA: Food and Nutrition Service; www.usda.gov/fcs/ • HungerWeb: www.brown.edu/Departments/World_Hunger_Program • Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research: www.cgiar.org/

  3. Who’s Amartya Sen? • Economist, Philosopher, Scholar • Origin; career • Nobel Prize, Economics

  4. Why Read This Book? • Still useful? • Research as process: new findings, conclusions, techniques modified • Recent events, and confirmation of analysis

  5. Further: Poverty, Famine as • A concrete way to begin to talk about the social world • Illustrates • issues; vocabulary; body of knowledge • way(s) of thinking

  6. Specifically: Approach Involves • Definition • Description • Measurement • Analysis • Public policy [prescription]

  7. Some Data • Numbers • Location: Hunger belt? • Who are the hungry?

  8. Hunger in the U. S. • Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 1995 • About 4% of households experienced reduced food intake and hunger as result of financial constraints • About 0.8% of households experienced severe hunger

  9. Famine vs. Hunger • Distinction • Hunger: sustained nutritional deprivation • Famine: acute deprivation, sharp increase in mortality • Famine: • As a social problem • Some history

  10. Famine deaths: hunger? Or disease? • Famine and children • “Missing women” issue • Where? • How many? • How do we know? Compare Female-to-Male Ratios across countries

  11. Famine and the Food Supply: Malthus vs. Sen • Population vs. food supply: how helpful is this comparison? • Malthus, and Essay on Population: the “race” • Sen, and famine, starvation as involving the relationship of people to food: the “entitlement approach”

  12. Thinking About Famine • Malthus: difficulties? • Food increasing faster than population: no famine? • Population increasing faster than food: famine?

  13. Sen, and the Entitlement Approach • Famine as a collapse of claims to food • Key: how do we get claims to food? • Production • Trade • One’s own labor • Inheritance or transfer

  14. Exchange Entitlement • Definition: The set of all bundles of commodities we can acquire for what we own (see p. 3) • What affects exchange entitlement: that is, what affects our ability to exert command over food? • Can we find employment?

  15. Can we sell assets? • What can we produce, sell? • What are our claims to social security? • What are our tax liabilities? • How does the price of what we have to sell compare with the price of what we buy (the price of food)?

  16. Examples (from Sen) • Peasant vs. landless laborer: Who owns the product? What happens when typhoon destroys half the crop? • “boom famine” • Increasing price of food • China; and decreased starvation, though not large food production increases

  17. Conclude: Useful to Focus On: • Distribution issues? Clarify: • Physical distribution? Possibly • Income distribution? Yes: this distributes claims to food • How food supply works through entitlement relationships • How claims to food are established

  18. Paraphrasing from page 8: not focus so much on what is as on who can command what . . .

  19. Is Food Supply Irrelevant? • More helpful to trace effects of changes in food supply through changes in entitlements • Why? May influence • understanding of why we see famine • policy response • Example: typhoon destroys half of rice crop: effects?

  20. Point: impact of natural disaster depends on how society is organized, especially to care for its economically vulnerable groups

  21. Poverty • How does Sen proceed? • Definition • Description • Measurement, (aggregation) • Analysis (underlying analytical concepts) • Public policy

  22. Definition • What’s poverty, exactly? • Why does it matter? Suggests ways to look for • Causes • Approaches to relief of the poor

  23. Approaches to Definition • Absolute deprivation: minimum subsistence definition • A biological approach • Survival • Ability to work effectively • Problems: translating nutritional requirements into food requirements; actually drawing the nutritional line

  24. Relative deprivation: inequality definition • Rich vs. poor • Problems • Poverty never goes away • Income transferred from top to middle: inequality reduced, but not poverty • Decrease in overall income: no change in inequality, poverty increases

  25. Aggregation • We want an indicator of poverty • Problem: how to do this, exactly?

  26. Identifying the Poor • Direct method (a consumption-based definition) • Poor if consumption bundle leaves some basic needs unfulfilled • Problem: What’s the minimum acceptable bundle, in terms of specific goods?

  27. Income method • Calculate minimum income necessary to meet basic needs; then identify those below that line • Catches ability to meet minimum needs • Permits us to measure the shortfall from the poverty line

  28. Unit of Analysis • Individual? • Family? This is most typical

  29. Common Measures • Head Count measure • Definition: proportion of the population defined as poor • U. S., and Mollie Orshansky • Problem: Not consider income shortfall

  30. Income Gap Ratio • Definition: the percentage shortfall of average income of the poor from the poverty line • Problem: not catch income distribution below poverty line • Example: income increases for some poor, decreases for others just enough to keep IGR constant; H constant, IGR constant, poverty up

  31. Overall Difficulty? • There are multiple dimensions to poverty • Hard to catch them all in a single measure • Sen’s work: illustrates an important part of thinking about the social world

  32. From the General (Poverty) to the Specific (Famine) • Issues requiring distinction regarding food consumption: • Low level • Decreasing trend • sudden collapse

  33. Importance of distinguishing trends, movements around trends: examples • Water levels, storm vs. calm • Gross Domestic Product • Regarding food: may see • Rising trend, production • Increasing size of fluctuations around trend

  34. Seeming paradox: periodic famine accompanying decreasing starvation • Point: Does famine affect all groups in society equally?

  35. How to Command Food • Legal means • Own production • Trade opportunities • Social security mechanisms

  36. Command over goods depends on society’s characteristics: • Legal • Political • Economic • Social • And on one’s place in society

  37. Summary • How useful is it to compare total food to total population in analyzing famine? • How useful is the term “the poor” as a category of analysis?

  38. Do market forces have a place in famine relief? • Role of increasing food prices • Where does purchasing power come from?

  39. Hunger Policy • Grounding: protecting entitlements to food • Goal: secure • Lives • Livelihoods

  40. Aid vs. development: a false choice? • Aid: getting food to the starving • Direct food aid • Employment subsidies; cash transfers • Development • Education; capital accumulation; growth • Social security system; and examples

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