Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation by Amartya Sen

Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation Reviews

• 
  Amit Mishra

  treatment of poverty by Amartya Sen is somewhat different than the usual definitions. His points are sharply focused on the causes and cures rather than the only counting symptoms of problems only. But in this book famine is considered as more fatal than the poverty. some historical record presents the same arguments too. And the opening lines of this book tells 'much about poverty is obvious enough' and it's true. there are so many talks about poverty and the possible redemption from these diseases. But in reality, the fundamental factors are still not well estabsh9de and the human race is not in a position to feed others. The approach of Prof. Sen has credibility and capability both.
• 
  Karn Satyarthi

  One rarely comes across a book that can legitimately claim to have redefined an entire area of study. Amartya Sen’s seminal essay on ‘Poverty and Famines’ is one such piece of work. The book questions all manners of conventional truth relating to famines and challenges our age old understanding of starvation and its determinants. The book was first published in 1981 and forms an important part of Amartya Sen’s oeuvre.
  
  The book under review is divided into ten chapters. The first five chapters focus on developing an appropriate framework for the study of famines while the last five chapters focus on study of specific famines of the 20th century in Bengal, Ethiopia, the Sahel region of Africa and Bangladesh. The book does not require any special knowledge of Mathematics and Amartya Sen has himself declares that it is targeted at a general audience. However for professional Economists and more interested readers he has supplied three detailed Mathematical appendices towards the end of the book.
  
  The key to unlocking Sen’s ideas on the causal forces of a famine is the ‘entitlement approach’. Sen invokes the entitlement approach to severely attack the general paradigm then available for the analysis of famines, i.e. ‘Food Availability Decline (FAD)’ hypothesis. The FAD hypothesis essentially looked at famines as a macroeconomic problem and explains them assuming a decline in overall food availability at the level of regions or countries. The key indicator for this approach by corollary then is the per capita availability of food. Sen dismisses this idea with a little bit of contempt (strictly in an academic sense) and although he does not explicitly mention it, the reader does get an impression that he considers the FAD approach to be orientalist in its imagination.
  
  The entitlement approach as opposed to FAD is a microeconomic tool. The basic understanding of this approach is as follows, each individual has certain factors of production like labour, land and capital at her disposal. This individual can exchange her factors of production for a bundle of goods, eg an unskilled construction labourer exchanges his labour for wages or food. The set of all such bundles that an individual can exchange her factors of production for is called her entitlement map (e-map). The said individual will starve only when not even one of the bundles in her entitlement map contains sufficient quantity of food. When such a situation is replicated at the level of many individuals or communities, famines occur. Thus according to Sen a famine has nothing to do with per capita food availability. As an example we can bring up the case of the construction worker once again. Suppose due to a combination of factors the demand for construction depletes heavily in a particular state of the country, the unskilled worker will have no choice other than to look for alternative employment, till such time that she gets some other work her e-map will have no bundle with sufficient food (provided she receives no government support in the form of transfer payments and has no savings). Therefore a heavy fall in the demand of construction will bring about a famine despite the fact that the per capita food availability has remained the same.
  
  Sen through an expansive and breath-taking exercise in data analysis goes on to show that the actual per capita availability of food for Bengal was higher in 1943 than in 1941, as a matter of fact there was no famine in 1941. He does a similar analysis for other regions as well and invariably shows that all mass starvations had microeconomic causes and a decline in per capita food availability was not a major causal factor in even one of the cases. Sen’s conclusions are also a stricture to those who defend the British Raj’s economic policies (3-4 million people died of starvation but the 1943 disaster was never officially designated as a famine for then a food for work program would have to be initiated). The book does well to emphasize the fact that famines are highly unlikely to occur in countries with a stable democracy not because stable democracies are good at food production but because stable democracies are more accountable. To find a book of such technical abstraction to be also a robust defence of democracy is like a breath of fresh air.
  
  ‘Poverty and Famines’ is unique because it is one of few books that deal with complex economic issues and yet retain a degree of accessibility. The book is written in extremely lucid prose and the author has made no attempt to alienate the general reader. Through a work of outstanding merit Sen is able to inject a healthy dose of humanism in the increasingly mechanistic and experimental world of Economics. The book’s greatest achievement lies in dislodging the Malthus within us all. Amartya Sen reminds us that cursing population growth for inadequate food availability is not only morally reprehensible but also empirically unsustainable. Over the years ‘Poverty and Famines’ has gained a reputation of being a classic in the area of developmental economics and when seen in the context of Sen’s outstanding contribution to social choice theory is indeed a must read for anyone interested in the area of poverty alleviation. It is perhaps because of such obvious brilliance that Kenneth Arrow once called Amartya Sen a scholar of ‘unusually wide interests ‘ and the book ‘more provocative than it may at first seem’[1].
  
  The book leaves us with interesting ideas on how to look at problems of poverty and hunger from the perspective of microeconomics. It gives a lot of food for thought for field level functionaries and administrators on innovative solutions to the problems hunger and destitution.
• 
  Shira

  Once again, a book for which I was sure that I'd written a review, probably because I cited it so often during my PhD work which eventually became my MPhil thesis.
  
  I found these notes from 2008, and am posting them with just a tiny bit of clean up:
  
  As I look back over Senn’s 1981 ‘Poverty and Famines’ after yet another argument, back in 2008, with my nice Thai office mate on why America is not in fact the Land of Opportunity if you start off poor, I see again what hit me when I first arrived at the University of Bath.
  
  Middle class people really don’t get it. My office mate keeps saying ‘just work hard and you’ll get a job’ but can’t fathom the lack of opportunities for people who have no connections and no home or family on which to fall back.
  
  Senn likewise documents the lack of resources and opportunities that play in with the system of entitlements in famines to ensure that the wealthy and middle classes tend not to suffer much, but the poor suffer by falling further into destitution or even starving to death. This is something I found myself thinking as I read ‘well, duh’ -it’s obvious to someone who lives among poor people because it’s all around the poor and the working classes. But to someone living in a house the next block over, with an office or a shop to tend to daily, it may not be so obvious. Just like an academic presenting ‘findings’ showing that the poor in England (lone mothers in that seminar) were better off if they had both a job and child care support. Well, duh. Why is this not immediately obvious to begin with? Because people with connections can’t imagine not having them. Or something. I’m not sure. It looks clear to me that people who’ve never missed a meal (as my older Chinese former roommate pointed out about the younger students, saying “they can’t understand because they haven’t suffered”), like my office mate, can’t understand the difficulties of people who weren’t blessed with such luck.
  
  Let’s make more luck for all of us, together.
  
• 
  Meema

  An excellent analysis of the politics of famines. There are some theoretical concepts discussed in the first 3 chapters and I greatly enjoyed reading those. I have not studied economics in an academic setting but I find Amartya Sen's books surprisingly easy to understand. perhaps it is how he writes, I sense a touch of humor here and there. There is a conversational quality to the way theories are discussed and debunked.
  Elaborate delibarations on poverty and deprivation is included here and I wish these were more widely circulated or perhaps made compulsory reads at high schools. Sometimes a little help is needed to ask these questions, to make the mind an inquisitive one, because the way we are indoctrinated in schools now, we grow up immune to things like poverty and injustice, even as concepts. I have gotten a little carried away here but there is a quote in this book from another economist who wrote"people must not become so poor they offend or are hurtful to society.We have a problem of poverty to the extent that low income creates problems for those who are not poor." Sen's comment on this is "to live in poverty may be sad but to offend or create problems for those who are not poor, it would appear is the real tragedy. it isn't easy to push much further the reduction of human beings into 'means'. "
  Amartya Sen will always be on the list of people who made me a better person.
• 
  Owain

  A damning attack on free-market capitalism. This book deals with the economics of food distribution during famines and looks at the most famous famines of the latter part of the last century. Sen reaches no specific conclusion on what should be done to ameliorate the poor distribution of a common and vital resource under capitalism.
  
  Sen describes how there is a tradition of famine-stricken countries containing enough food to adequately feed the populace and sometimes even enough to be exporting substantial amounts of food and yet large sections of the populace cannot afford sufficient food because they do not have economic access to it. I.e. they're too poor to afford to eat. Too poor to eat in a country that holds enough food to feed everyone. If that wasn't the best argument against capitalist economics I don't know what is.
  
  One interesting point that the author makes is between peasants and landless workers and how peasant classes generally do better in famine conditions as they have a direct entitlement to the crops they harvest whereas workers can only receive a wage which they must exchange in return for food. Presuming the wage is adequate enough and food available enough.
  
  Sen isn't a socialist and he leaves the reader to draw their own conclusion as to what solution is best, whether it be just a form of state welfare or full-blown socialism.
• 
  Kristoffer

  Important, beautifully structured, and extremely well-argued - social science at its best.
• 
  Gaurav

  Prof Sen has done a tremendous job by explaining the complexities of poverty with lots of data and examples. He has done a research on famines and poverty of a longer period. He has visited multiple locations and collected the first-hand data as well. A nice book to understand the concept of poverty in detail.
• 
  Ted Tyler

  Phenomenal book that I think everyone should consider reading. Professor Sen attacks the notion that modern famine is caused by a decline in food availability. He empirically shows that famine has other causal mechanisms entirely. His framework of "entitlement deprivation" provides a general structure through which to analyze famines. The author clearly and concisely maps out the relationships between individuals and their methods of obtaining food. Specific causes such as regional weather changes, government policy, economic shocks, and the outbreak of war are the primary factors that cause famine. His framework allows for analysts to look at the various relationships and then choose a specific factor or combination of factors to explain causation.
• 
  IJ

  starvation is a function of entitlements and not of food availability.
  
  **The entitlement approach** —— ownership patterns — various influences that affect exchange entitlement mappings(employment, exchange, social security benefits...). Its limitations are ambiguous, without protection of rights, culture.
  Powerful explanation for famine during the boom; food exports still occur in famine locations.
  The most important is the nature and causes of the entitlement failures.
  The definition and measurement of poverty - i.e. the research methodology - is important. Absolute and relative poverty, and relative changes between poor people are all of interest.
• 
  Agoes

  Buku ini isinya menjelaskan bahwa kelaparan bukan semata-mata disebabkan karena makanannya tidak ada (kurang ketersediaan bahan pangan), tetapi juga karena hilangnya kemampuan seseorang untuk memperoleh makanan tersebut (kehilangan pekerjaan, kehilangan kemampuan, dll).
  
  Ceritanya baca essay yang sebenarnya udah lama diterbitkan ini karena situasinya lagi COVID-19 dan kemarin membaca berita tentang ibu Yulie yang meninggal karena kelaparan.
  
  Reviewnya dilanjutkan di blog:
  
  https://katasiagoes.wordpress.com/202...
• 
  Nirupma

  The book is a treatise on the famines occurred in India and their aftermaths.
• 
  Amit Khurana

  A nice book to understand the conditions of poverty.
• 
  Philip

  Such a simple argument. If famines were caused by a shortage of food, then why doesn´t everyone starve?
• 
  tobi ☆ トビ

  amartya sen… unique point of view and super inspiring compared to lots of other authors on this topics. probably the best to read for famines, especially related to british imperialism. i cite sen (and i see sen cited) a lot on essays
• 
  Tânia

  O estudo das grandes fomes tem-se pautado pela abordagem do declínio da disponibilidade alimentar, que se baseia na análise agregada da disponibilidade de alimentos dentro de um determinado território e da respetiva oferta per capita como indicador para explicar a ocorrência de carências alimentares, em geral, e de fomes, em particular. Esta visão é refutada pelo economista Amartya Sen que introduz uma abordagem baseada no sistema de concessão de direitos, redirecionando o foco de análise para a capacidade de o indivíduo dispor de alimentos através de meios legais (produção, troca comercial, etc.).
  A abordagem em termos de concessão de direitos tem como pressuposto que o indivíduo é dotado de fatores de produção (trabalho, terra e capital) que pode trocar por bens alimentares para satisfazer as suas necessidades nutricionais. A fome ocorre, segundo esta perspetiva, nos momentos de desgaste dos direitos individuais, os quais podem ser motivados por diversos fatores, como o declínio da disponibilidade alimentar, mas também a inflação, o desemprego, cortes nos rendimentos, etc. Assim, a análise das causas das falhas na concessão de direitos surge como ponto central para a compreensão da fome e respetivas dinâmicas sociais (mais do que saber a proporção de população com carências alimentares, deve-se olhar para o seu retrato socioeconómico). A hipótese proposta por Sen é testada nos quatro casos empíricos apresentados no livro - as fomes de Bengala (1943), da Etiópia (1973-1974), do Bangladesh (1974) e dos países do Sael (anos 70) -, que são acompanhados de um extenso relatório sobre a evolução da fome, o seu impacto e possíveis causas.
  Embora por vezes desafiante, esta é uma leitura que se pretende acessível para uma larga audiência, deixando a componente mais técnica da monografia remetida aos apêndices. O autor fez um excelente trabalho ao acompanhar os dados de explicações claras e concisas que desvendam o raciocínio por detrás do argumento.
• 
  Andrew

  Sen's theory fundamentally holds water. I'm not sure how this would hold up to the reader who doesn't really care that much about political economy, but I thought it was awfully interesting, showing how the murky waters of entitlement separate a populace from its own food supply, leading to tragedy, often demonstrating immense contradictions in the logic of capitalist global development schemes.
• 
  আকিব সাতিল

  Dr. Amartya Sen was honest to point out the elephant in the room in this book. Specially his rhetoric on the Bangladesh famine was an out of the box attempt that revealed the facts behind the death of 1.5 million Bangladeshis.
• 
  Robert

  A very interesting theory that changed the way I think about famines. However, the book itself is somewhat technical and dull.
• 
  Tanya Lolonis

  makes the case that famines are frequently political in nature--when hard times hit, some groups get food while less important groups do not. dense, but worth the effort.