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List of famines. Depiction of victims of the Irish Great Famine, 1845–1849. This is a non-exhaustive list of famines . List. *Topics marked as such are still under debate. See also. Main article lists. Bengal famine. Droughts and famines in Russia and the Soviet Union. Famine in India. Famines in the Czech lands. Famines in Ethiopia.
- Famine Across The World Since 1860
- Long-Run View of Famine in Single Countries
- How Frequent Were Famines in The Distant Past?
- Why Do Famines Happen?
- What Does A Famine Declaration Declare?
- Does Population Growth Lead to Hunger and Famine?
- Do Famines Curb Population Growth?
- Data Quality & Definition
- Data Sources
Long term trends in global famine mortality
Compared to earlier historical periods, very few people have died in famines in recent decades. Here we show two bar charts based on our dataset of famines. The blue bars show the number of famine deaths in each decade since 1860. The number of famine deaths varies hugely from decade to decade depending on the occurrence of individual catastrophic famines. Nevertheless the last four decades have seen low numbers of famine deaths by historical standards. The red bars show famine mortality rela...
Victims of individual famines
This chart shows the estimated number of people dying in individual famines since the 1860s, based on our dataset of famines. The length of each line shows the duration of the famine and the color shows the continent in which the famine occurred. What this chart doesn't show however is the significant uncertainty that surrounds many of these estimates. As we discuss in our section on Data Quality, historical famine estimates are frequently based on very scant demographic information, and even...
England
In today’s developed countries peacetime famines had largely ceased by the mid-19th century.10 In England this was achieved at least a century earlier. This graph shows estimates of the crude population increase – the number of births minus the number of deaths divided by the population – taken from Campbell (2009).11 These figures are based on a national sample of parish register entries, which are available with good coverage from 1538 when the registration of baptisms, marriages and burial...
Japan
Saito (2010) has created a chronology of famines in Japan since the 6th century. Before the 14th century data is judged to be incomplete (although the records for the 8th and 9th are surprisingly complete – there were more than 35 famines in each of the two centuries). The number and intensity of famines is shown as 'points' in Saito's visualisation shown here: 1 point being given to widespread famines, 0.5 points being given to more localised events. Overall Saito's chronology comprises info...
It is very difficult to know how common famines were in the distant past given the absence of historical record. As noted by the World Peace Foundation, “generally speaking, better demographic calculations lead to lower estimations of excess deaths than those provided by journalists and other contemporary observers. We might therefore reasonably ex...
Food supply
We might naturally tend to associate famine with drought or other natural phenomena, and indeed most documented famines have occurred in the context of harvest failures, often due to droughts or flooding. However, in recent times, aggregate food availability per person has increased dramatically, and given the comparable ease of transportation and communication, localized shortfalls can – in theory at least – be met by importing food from surplus areas far quicker and at a much lower cost now...
Poverty
As Amartya Sen argued, the fact that there may be enough food available in aggregate within a given area does not necessarily mean that everyone will be able to afford it.18 Food crises are often precipitated by spikes in the price of food relative to wages, or the collapse in the price of assets owned. The latter commonly accompanies famines due to many people all at once trying to sell their assets (for instance their livestock) in order to be able to buy more food. Such shocks can mean tha...
Democracy and oppression
Amartya Sen famously noted in his 1999 book Development as Freedomthat “there has never been a famine in a functioning multiparty democracy”. He suggested that democratic authorities are incentivized by elections to be more responsive to food crises and that the presence of a free press can quickly draw attention to the event and hold government to account. Whilst exceptions to this rule can be found – depending on the definition of ‘democracy’ and ‘famine’ being employed – the visualization...
In February 2017, parts of South Sudan were officially declared by the UN as being in famine – the first such declaration since 2011. By May the famine had apparently receded, thanks to an effective aid response that averted large-scale loss of life. And yet, the crisis was far from over. Indeed the overall food security situation in the country ha...
Modern Malthusians
It is not uncommon to see arguments along the lines of this quote from Sir Jonathan Porritt, claiming that famines are ultimately caused by overpopulation. Porritt – former director of 'Friends of the Earth' and also former chairman of the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission – was talking about the 2011 famine in Somalia that went on to kill roughly 250,000 people.45He seems certain that the rapid population growth witnessed in East Africa had made famine there ‘unavoidable’. T...
Does population growth cause famine?
This chart compares the number of famine deaths per decade – based on our famine dataset– with the world population over the same period. Looking at the world as whole, it is very difficult to square Malthus' hypothesis with the simple but stark fact that, despite the world's population increasing from less than one billion in 1800 to more than seven billion today, the number of people dying due to famine in recent decades is only a tiny fraction of that in previous eras. We might naturally t...
Population growth does not make famine inevitable
Environmental degradation, including climate change, does pose a threat to food security, and the growth of human populations has undoubtedly exacerbated many environmental pressures. However, this represents only one aspect of the complex explanation of why so many people suffer and die from undernourishment today, despite their being adequate food available for consumption globally.57 'Malthusian' explanations of famine and hunger thus fall short for the following reasons, the evidence for...
Is famine the ultimate 'check'?
English political economist, Thomas Robert Malthus, writing at the turn of the 19th century, is famous for describing famine as "the last, the most dreadful resource of nature" which acts to "level the population with the food of the world" should other forces fail to lower birth rates or increase death rates.46 We can think of this ‘Malthusian’ proposition as containing two separate hypotheses: firstly, that unabated population growth ultimately leads to famine; secondly, that famine acts as...
China's 'Great Leap Forward' famine
The 'Great Leap Forward'-famine in China from 1959-61 was the single largest famine in history in terms of absolute numbers of deaths. Excess mortality estimates vary hugely, but based on our midpoint estimates, it cost more than double the number of lives than any other famine. Our table of famine mortality estimates is available here. This chart shows the estimated changes to birth and death rates during and after this famine period, in addition to the effect of these changes on overall pop...
The Great Irish Famine
This picture contrasts somewhat with the developments following the Great Irish Famine of the late 1840s, as shown in the chart below. After a period of rapid growth that brought the population to over 8 million, a famine struck that was, in relation to the country's population, far more severe than the 'Great Leap Forward'-famine. It is thought to have reduced the population by about one quarter in its immediate effects: one million perishing and a further million emigrating. But one strikin...
This topic page is based on our 'Our World in Data-Dataset of Famines' which covers the period since the mid-19th century and which can be found at the end of this document. In the following we discuss how famines are defined and in particular our reasoning for how we constructed the dataset.
Most of the visualisations in this topic page are based on the 'Our World in Data-Dataset of Famines' assembled by us. Our dataset is based on four main sources:
26 de set. de 2020 · Below is a list of ten of the most deadly famines throughout history, from 1700’s to the cusp of the new millennium. The Great Chinese Famine 1959-61. The deadliest famine in history took place in China between 1959 and 1961.
This is a selective list of known major famines, ordered by date. Between 108 BC and 1911 AD, there were no fewer than 1,828 major famines in China, or one nearly every year in one or another province; however, the famines varied greatly in severity. [1] [2] There were 95 famines in Britain during the Middle Ages. [3] [4]
Other notable famines include the Great Famine of 1876–1878, in which 6.1 million to 10.3 million people died and the Indian famine of 1899–1900, in which 1.25 to 10 million people died. The famines were ended by the 20th century with the exception of the Bengal famine of 1943 killing an estimated 2.1 million Bengalis during World War II.
1 de mai. de 2024 · Famine, severe and prolonged hunger in a substantial proportion of the population of a region or country, resulting in malnutrition and starvation. Famines usually last for a limited time, ranging from a few months to a few years, and can result in death by starvation and disease.
This is a List of famines in China, part of the series of lists of disasters in China. Between 108 BC and 1911 AD, there were no fewer than 1,828 recorded famines in China, or once nearly every year in one province or another. The famines varied in severity.
