Premium
Malnutrition and Poverty in the Early Stages of Famine: North Darfur, 1988–90
Author(s) -
JASPARS SUSANNE,
YOUNG HELEN
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
disasters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.744
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-7717
pISSN - 0361-3666
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-7717.1995.tb00340.x
Subject(s) - famine , poverty , malnutrition , livelihood , psychological intervention , environmental health , medicine , entitlement (fair division) , vulnerability (computing) , development economics , socioeconomics , geography , economic growth , economics , agriculture , psychiatry , computer security , archaeology , mathematical economics , computer science
In this article we report findings on the relationship between malnutrition and poverty during a period of acute food insecurity in Darfur, Sudan. Children of rich and poor families were equally likely to be malnourished, which is explained in terms of people's responses to the threat of famine. This finding has important implications for targeting interventions in the early stages of famine. Appropriate interventions at the early stages of famine are livelihood and income support to the most vulnerable. The entitlement theory of famine causation assumes that the poor are most vulnerable, and become malnourished and die during famines. In this article we show that this assumption does not hold. Even though poverty is the root cause of malnutrition, it does not follow that anthropometric status can be used to target individual poor families, or even that targeting the poor is appropriate in famine situations.