Researchers Craig Jenkins and Stephen Scanlan recently used United Nations data to try to find out what was the single largest factor distinguishing countries that suffer from hunger. You might think the obvious factor would be the country’s food supply, but instead it turned out to be the level of internal violence with in a country.
Jenkins and Scanlan looked at 53 developing countries with populations over 1 million. They found that the level of violence within a country had the single biggest affect on food supply and child hunger. Lack of democratic government and high levels of arms trade were also significant factors in determining whether or not a country suffered from hunger.
As Jenkins summed up the findings,
Food supply is not the central issue in reducing hunger. Hunger is largely a political issue.
Whereas some researchers have absurdly claimed that democracy might contribute to hunger problems, Jenkins findings were just the opposite — the more democracy, the less hunger. “We found that political democratization encourages economic growth and improvements in basic needs,” Jenkins said. “We need more democracy, not less.”
Their study also found that, contrary to a widely circulating myth, food imports in developing countries do not increase hunger — they just don’t seem to help it much either. “At the very least, food imports are not harmful, as some people have suggested,” Jenkins said. “It may be that if we could separate the various forms of food imports we would find that food aid – food that is donated — actually does help reduce hunger. However, the results suggest that international food imports must be better targeted to address underlying hunger problems.”
Source:
Worldwide hunger more a political problem than a supply problem, study finds. Ohio State University, January 2002.