poverty and famines social world i some web sites usda: food and nutrition service; hungerweb:
Post on 01-Jan-2016
215 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
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/
Why Read This Book?
• Still useful?
• Research as process: new findings, conclusions, techniques modified
• Recent events, and confirmation of analysis
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
Specifically: Approach Involves
• Definition
• Description
• Measurement
• Analysis
• Public policy [prescription]
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
Famine vs. Hunger
• Distinction– Hunger: sustained nutritional deprivation– Famine: acute deprivation, sharp increase in
mortality
• Famine:– As a social problem– Some history
• 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
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”
Thinking About Famine
• Malthus: difficulties?– Food increasing faster than population: no
famine?– Population increasing faster than food: famine?
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
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?
– 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)?
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
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
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?
• Point: impact of natural disaster depends on how society is organized, especially to care for its economically vulnerable groups
Poverty
• How does Sen proceed?– Definition– Description– Measurement, (aggregation)– Analysis (underlying analytical concepts)– Public policy
Definition
• What’s poverty, exactly?
• Why does it matter? Suggests ways to look for– Causes– Approaches to relief of the poor
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
• 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
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?
• 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
Common Measures
• Head Count measure– Definition: proportion of the population
defined as poor– U. S., and Mollie Orshansky– Problem: Not consider income shortfall
• 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
top related