Political Economy of Hunger Volume 1: Entitlement and Well-being

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. This volume is the first of three addressing a wide range of policy issues relating to the role of public action in combating hunger and deprivation in the modern world. It deals with the background nutritional, economic, social, and political aspects of the problem of world hunger. Topics covered include the characteristics and causal antecedents of famines and endemic deprivation, the interconnections between economic and political factors, the role of social relations and the family, the special problems of women's deprivation, the connection between food consumption and other indicators of living standards, and the medical aspects of undernourishment and its consequences. Several contributions also address the political background of public policy, in particular the connection between the government and the public, including the role of newspapers and the media, and the part played by political commitment and by adversarial politics and pressures. Taken together, these essays provide a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the problem of hunger and deprivation, and an important guide for action.

1 - Introduction
2 - Food, Economics, and Entitlements
3 - Global Food Balances and Individual Hunger: Three Themes in an Entitlements Based Approach
4 - The Politics of Hunger and Entitlement
5 - Chronic Hunger in the World: Impact of International Policies
6 - An Independent Press and Anti Hunger Strategies: The Indian Experience
7 - Adapting to Undernourishment: The Biological Evidence and its Implications
8 - Nutrition and the Economics of Food: Implications of Some Recent Controversies
9 - Food and Standard of Living: An Analysis Based on Sri Lankan Data
10 - The Intrafamily Distribution of Hunger in South Asia
11 - Rural Women and Food Production in Sub Saharan Africa

Jean Dr`eze, development economist, has taught at the London School of Economics and the Delhi School of Economics and is currently Visiting Professor at Ranchi University. He has made wide-ranging contributions to development economics and public policy, with special reference to India. He is co-author (with Amartya Sen) of Hunger and Public Action (Oxford University Press, 1989), An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions (Penguin, 2013), and Sense and Solidarity (OUP: 2019). Amartya Sen teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard University, and was previously Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He has served as President of the American Economic Association, the Indian Economic Association, the International Economic Association, and the Econometric Society. His awards include the Bharat Ratna (India), Commandeur de la légion d'honneur (France), the National Humanities Medal (USA), Honorary Companion of Honour (UK), Ordem Nacional do Mérito Científico (Brazil), and the Nobel Prize in Economics.