Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Sen and Dreze (1989) express the same view somewhat more emphatically when they say that ‘hunger, and famine in particular, is intolerable in the modern world, because it is unnecessary and unwarranted’. Contrary to Malthus’s argument in ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’ it is agreed that if all the world’s resources, in particular food resources were distributed evenly around the world then theoretically speaking there should be no hunger or famine. In 1998 it was estimated that between 15-35 million people around the world were suffering from famine, and up to 1 billion from malnourishment. This essay is going to look at the causes of this ‘unnecessary’ state of the world. Whilst famine has received press attention, malnourishment has often been ignored largely because it does not have the same ‘drama’ attached to it and because it is regarded as a longer term problem with fewer quick fix solutions, though it affects many more people. Since Malthus’ work there has been an evolution in the understanding of the processes leading to famine and malnourishment. This essay is going to firstly look at traditional explanations such as environmental and population growth. Then it will discuss the grou