Who's hungry? And how do we know?: food shortage, poverty, and deprivation

Abstract

The United Nations University is an organ of the United Nations established by the General Assembly in 1972 to be an international community of scholars engaged in research, advanced training, and the dissemination of knowledge related to the pressing global problems of human survival, development, and welfare. Its activities focus mainly on peace and conflict resolution, development in a changing world, and science and technology in relation to human welfare. The University operates through a worldwide network of research and postgraduate training centres, with its planning and coordinating headquarters in Tokyo.The United Nations University Press, the publishing division of the UNU, publishes scholarly books and periodicals in the social sciences, humanities, and pure and applied natural sciences related to the University's research. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations University. United Nations University PressThe United Nations University, 53-70, Jingumae 5-chome, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, 150-8925, Japan Tel: þ81-3-3499-2811 Fax: þ81-3-3406-7345 E-mail: sales@hq.unu.edu http://www.unu.edu United Nations University Office in North America 2 United Nations Plaza, Room DC2-2050DC2- -2058 Contents PrefaceIn July 1986 the Feinstein World Hunger Program faculty at Brown University, directed by geographer Robert Kates, began formulating a conceptual framework for analysing hunger and hunger-related policy making. This ''hunger typology'' is based on a three-tiered paradigm of hunger causation and consequences that draws on methods of food production/famine research, entitlement theory, and nutrition/nutritional anthropology. The framework brings together the disparate disciplines of political economics, sociology-anthropology, and public health-human biology, and also policy and organizational research. It integrates their approaches and evidence into a single format that allows all to identify ''who's hungry'' and take steps to prevent and alleviate hunger. The hunger typology distinguishes among situations of food shortage, food poverty, or food deprivation. At a regional or national level, a food shortage may be due to political, climatic, or other socioeconomic forces. Such food-short or famine conditions can be distinguished from food poverty at the household level, in which people go hungry because they lack the resources to acquire food even when the regional food supply is sufficient. Ultimately, even if households have sufficient resources to command and access food, individuals go hungry if distribution rules militate against their getting an adequate share, if cultural rules of consumption prejudice them from consuming an adequate mix of nutrients, or if individuals are ill and unable to ingest, metabolize, or benefit from the nutrients potentially available. This third context, termed food deprivation, includes situations of malnutrition among the so-called vulnerable groups: infants and young children, pregnant an...