Famine Analysis

Famine Analysis

Sen’s work on the causes of famines can be viewed as an application of the capabilities approach to a real world situation. In Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation, Sen rejects the commonly accepted idea that famines are caused by a decline in food. He gives prominent examples, such as the Bengal famine of 1943, in which a famine is not only caused by a lack of food, but it is mainly caused by inequalities in the distribution of food.

The Entitlement Approach

In Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation, Sen uses the entitlement approach to analyze starvation and famines. The entitlement approach concentrates on the ability of people to command food through the legal means available in society, including the use of production possibilities, trade opportunities, and other methods of acquiring food (Sen, p 45, 1981). It assumes that people starve because they do not have the ability to command food, ignoring the alternative possibility that people starve because they do not have the ability to avoid starvation. Ownership of food is one of the basic and most primitive rights that exist in society, and in every society there are rules that govern those rights. The entitlement approach focuses on each person’s entitlements to commodity bundles that include food, and consequently it views starvation as a failure to be entitled to a bundle with enough food (Sen, p 45, 1981). This approach can be contrasted with the most common approach used in famine analysis called food availability decline, where the causes of a famine are attributed mainly to a decline in the supply of food for a given population.

In a typical economy, most people have a variety of entitlements that they can choose from. Ei is the entitlement set of person i in a given society, in a given situation, and it consists of set of alternative commodity bundles, any one of which can be chosen by the person (Sen, p 45, 1981). In an economy characterized by private ownership and exchange through trade and production, Ei depends on two parameters, the endowment of the person, or the ownership bundle, and the exchange entitlement mapping, defined as the function that specifies the set of alternative commodity bundles that the person can command for each endowment bundle (Sen, p 44-45, 1981). A person whose set of commodity bundles, labeled Fi, will be forced to starve if his entitlement relations do not entitle him to any member of Fi, given his endowment and his exchange entitlement mapping. As a result, his minimum food requirements are not being met, sending him into the starvation set of Si.

Entitlements and Capabilities

The most pervasive deficiency that Sen cites in developmental economics is its concentration on national product, aggregate income, and total supply of goods, rather than on the entitlements of people and the capabilities that those entitlements generate. Sen defines entitlements as the set of alternative commodity bundles that a person can command in a society using the totality of rights and opportunities that he or she faces (Sen, p 497, 1984). On the basis of a person’s entitlement, a person can acquire some capabilities, such as the ability to be well nourished, while failing to acquire other capabilities. Sen views the process of economic development as a process that expands the capabilities of people.

Sen argues that deprivation is best seen in terms of the failure of certain basic functionings, rather than in terms of variables such as income or calorie intake. Functioning failures can be assessed either in terms of achievement or in the terms of the freedom to achieve. This distinction between achieved functionings and the capability to function is important in the context of those functionings in which individual choices and behavior patterns vary greatly. The distinction between capability and achieved functioning is important in the field of nutrition because of the influence of food habits, which have a major influence on the choice of diet and thus on the way that one uses their capability to meet nutritional needs. Therefore, the capability approach can function either on functionings, the capability to function, or both (Sen, p 42, 1989).

Limitations to the Entitlement Approach

• Ambiguities in the specification of entitlements mean that entitlements may not be well defined in the absence of a market-clearing equilibrium and in pre-capitalist formations vagueness can exist on the property rights and related matters.
• The entitlement approach to famines will be ineffective when transfers of entitlement relations involve violations of rights within the given legal structure, such as looting. However, recent famines seem to have taken place in societies where order is intact, and with nothing illegal occurring that led to starvation.
• People’s food consumption may fall below their entitlements for a variety of reasons, such as ignorance, fixed food habits, or apathy. These reasons have nothing to do with unequal distribution of food or the inability of a person to acquire and maintain a sufficient entitlement of food.
• The entitlement approach’s focus on starvation must be distinguished from famine mortality. Many famine deaths are caused by epidemics which have patterns of their own. These epidemics are induced partly by starvation but also by other famine characteristics such as population movement or breakdown of sanitary facilities.

Policy Implications

• When examining the relation between nutritional intakes and human functionings, it is important to make clear the distinction between income and commodities, and functionings and capabilities. Removing nutritional deprivation does not just depend on achieving certain levels of income or calorie intake. There must be a distinction between income level and the capability of being well nourished and healthy in order to create needed remedial policies.
• Distinguishing between commodity command and functioning ability is particularly important when dealing with groups that have systematic disadvantages for biological or social reasons. Examples include the elderly or handicapped, who are not only disadvantaged in earning an income, but also have greater difficulty in converting incomes into functionings that enable them to live comfortably. While physical factors that disadvantage these groups can usually not be eradicated, the social factors can be improved through public policies that are aimed at maintaining capability, such as through dietary supplementation, health care, and the creation of economic and social opportunities.
• The capability approach also draws attention to the need to consider inputs other than food as determinants of nutritional functioning and capability. Nutritional achievements are strongly influenced by non food inputs such as health care, basic education, drinking water, and sanitary facilities. The vast majority of those who die in a famine are killed by various diseases and not directly by starvation. In order to be effective, the parameters of policy must contain a much wider field of action than just command over food (Sen, p 43-44, 1989).

Sen's Capabilities Approach | The Capabilities Approach | Critiques | Real World Applications