The paradigms associated with population and hunger are those of Thomas Malthus, Lester R Brown, Paul R Ehrlich, Julian L Simon and Ester Boserup.  Their views are often described as Malthusian, Neo-Malthusian and Contra-Malthusian (Devereux, 1993).  This essay will look critically at these paradigms and suggest that they do not adequately explain why people are hungry.  An alternative, Marxist model (Weeks, 1999), based on access to food is then considered.  Before continuing, however, it is worth defining the terms ‘population, and ‘hunger’.  ‘Hunger’ will be used to mean famine, undernourishment and malnutrition (Dando, 1980), or in other words, the quality and quantity of food.  ‘Population’ will refer to growth, density and the idea that there are too many people for the Earth to support (Cohen, 1995).

Thomas Malthus was not the first person to consider the relationship between population growth and food, but he was the most influential (Dyson, 1996).  Malthus published ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’ in 1798.  In it, he warned that unless an equilibrium was maintained between population and resources, particularly food supplies, their would be a “difficulty of subsistence” (Malthus quoted in Weeks, 1999: p80) and that it would be “severely felt by a large portion of mankind” (ibid).  In other words, people would go hungry and die.  Malthus believed that the resulting deaths would create an “upward pressure on the death rate” (Dyson, 1996: p4) and eventually balance population with resources.  In his Second Essay, published in 1803, he revised his views, arguing that changes in the birth rate could also bring equilibrium.  Malthus suggested that when food was scarce, people tended to delay their marriages, have children later and have less of them (Dyson, 1996).  Malthus, however, failed to appreciate that technological improvements could increase agricultural productivity, or to anticipate the transport revolution that would allow food to be traded between surplus and deficit nations (Devereux, 1993).  Also, recent research has suggested that starvation does not necessarily check population growth.  The 1974 famine in Bangladesh killed 1.5 million people or almost 2% of the population.  These excess deaths, however, were compensated in less than one year by a population growth rate of 3% (Devereux, 1993).  Malthus also failed to look at the spatial distribution of hunger, preferring instead to look at the population as a single unit (Weeks, 1999).   Much of his work was based on early U.S. censuses, but by taking the U.S. population as a whole, he failed to consider why the U.S.A., with enough food to feed everyone, should still have hungry people.

Simon and Boserup are the two most well known critics of Malthus.  Simon believed that the “ultimate resource is people” (Quoted in Dyson, 1996: p6), whilst Boserup thought that Malthus had “overlooked or underestimated the positive effects which increasing population may have on infrastructural investment and technological levels” (Quoted in Devereux, 1993: p50).  Simon and Boserup have an optimistic view which can be traced to economists such as Adam Smith, who believed that a market system could solve any problem associated with population growth (Dyson, 1996).  However, the sub-Saharan region of Africa has seen the number of chronically underfed rise from 94 million to 175 million people between 1970-90 despite a high population growth rate (DeRose et al, 1998).

Figure 1(a): Sub-Saharan Africa.  Absolute Number & Percentage of Chronically Underfed.

Year AbsoluteNumber (Millions) As a percentage of the Population Increase(Millions) PercentageIncrease
1970 94  35% - -
1975 112 37% 18 19%
1980 128 36% 16 14%
1990 175 37% 47 37%
1970-1990 - - 81 86%

(Source: Uvin cited in Young, 1996: p98 / Analysis: The Author)

Figure 1(b): Sub-Saharan Africa.  Population Increase.

Year Population(Millions) Increase(Millions) PercentageIncrease
1970 269 - -
1975 303 34 13%
1980 356 53 18%
1990 473 117 33%
1970-1990 - 204 75%

(Source: Uvin cited in Young, 1996: p98 / Analysis: The Author)

Figure 1 shows that although the percentage of the population that is underfed has remained around 35-37%, the absolute numbers have increased by 81 million – an 86% increase since 1970 – compared to an overall population increase of 75% of 204 million.  A conclusion that can be drawn from Figure 1 is that in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa, the pressure of population growth has not led to the advances in agriculture needed to feed the growing population.

 Shortfalls in world grain production in the early 1970s, plus Africa’s experience of repeated famines and falling food output, led to a neo-Malthusian view that the world’s capacity had been reached and could no longer provide food for everyone (Devereux, 1993).  Figure 2 shows a cartoon published in 1975 which illustrates the concerns of neo-Malthusian thinkers such as Brown and Ehrlich.

Brown and Ehrlich believed that the scale of world population growth, coupled with the environmental damage associated with it would mean that food production couldn’t possibly keep up with population growth (Dyson, 1996).  In 1971, Ehrlich even went as far as saying that the Earth was “a dying planet” (Ehrlich quoted in Weeks, 1999: p87) and that the problem was one of “too many people”, “too little food” and “environmental degradation” (ibid).  However, as Dyson (1993) points out, neo-Malthusians have been predicting global famine for the last 20-30 years, but that it has not yet happened.  Infact, the World Bank in 1986 reported that the “world has ample food.  The growth of global food production has been faster than the unprecedented population growth of the past forty-years” (Quoted in Devereux, 1998: p62).  The fact that many countries produce enough food to be able to export their surpluses should mean that hunger is not a world problem, but yet millions of people do not have enough food.

Figure 3 shows food imports and exports against overall food requirements during the 1980s.  Whilst there are a large number of countries in Africa and Asia that have insufficient food even after imports, there are a few, including China and Venezuela, that have insufficient food but still export.

The World Bank suggests that these countries suffer from “a lack of food security caused by a lack of purchasing power” (ibid).  In other words, it is not population growth in itself that causes hunger, but that population’s access to food.

 Young (1996) contends that access to food is governed by politics, particularly that of production and supply.  Amartya Sen also suggests that “a persons ability to command food…depends on the entitlement relations that govern possession and use in that society” (Quoted in Devereux, 1993: p67).  Young (1996) also promotes a different way at looking at the spatial distribution of hunger, suggesting that it be looked at the international, national, sub-national and household level.  This is in contrast to previous models that tended to treat the world as a single unit (Dyson, 1996) and ignore social, economic and political structures.

 At an international level, developing countries are hampered by the historical legacies of colonialism and neo-colonialism.  The economies of developing countries grew to meet the needs of their colonial masters and usually led to their dependence on one or two commodities (Young, 1996).  Countries such as Ghana, with a reliance on cocoa, were vulnerable to the 40% fall in agricultural prices between 1980-90 (Anderson, 1991).  Falling export earnings and rising import costs has led to a high burden of debt in the South (Young, 1996).   North controlled international organisations have usually acted to maintain the status quo.  World Bank / IMF imposed Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP) have led to many people loosing their access to food when food subsidies are cut and prices rise (Young, 1996).  The national framework is heavily influenced by international factors, but Young (1996) suggests that if the State is committed, then it is possible to reduce hunger.  Unfortunately, this is rarely the case.  DeRose et al (1998) identified structural factors that affect access to food.  These include urban bias, cash crop production, inequitable land distribution and the political interests of landowners and multi-national companies.  Some of these factors, such as land distribution, are hangovers from colonial times when a small local elite replaced the small colonial elite.  Others are based on policies that have favoured industrialisation and urbanisation or have ignored the importance of women in agriculture (see Figure 4) (Anderson, 1991). South Africa during apartheid is an example of these factors.  The majority of the land was held by a small elite, whilst small holders and women-headed rural households were ignored by the state (Young, 1996).

 These international and national factors mean that some countries are more likely to suffer from hunger than others are.  It is also true to say that some sub-national units and households within countries are more likely to suffer too.  For example, ethnic minorities within countries and refugees often have poor access to food (Young, 1996).  Even at household level, the distribution of hunger is not even.  Households with few assets, many dependents and a peripheral location are vulnerable to social, economic and physical disasters and have a high probability for hunger.  Anderson (1991) suggests that even within the poorest households, power is the key to hunger.  In male dominated cultures, “women eat late…and eat less well than men” (p70).  A study in Bangladesh showed that small boys received 16% more food than girls did, whilst men between 15 and 45 received 29% more than their wives (Bennett quoted in Anderson, 1991).

 Neo-Malthusians such as Brown and Ehrlich who claim that the world is headed for disaster and famine fail to take into account that even the poorest countries with the highest population growth rates have many that do not go hungry.  Simon and Boserup claim that technological advances will continue to make sure the world is fed, but while the food stocks in the North grow, many millions in the South are hungry.  It is the author’s view that whilst population is an important factor in the distribution of hunger, it is a populations ability to access food that is the key.  As Amaryta Sen suggests, “starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat.  It is not the characteristic of their not being enough food to eat.  While the latter can be a cause of the former, it is but one of many possible causes” (Quoted in Devereux, 1993: p66).

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