Before you read on: about three million people died in the Bengal famine of 1943. What did Sen see as the main cause?
Sen found food output in 1943 higher than in 1941, a year with no famine. In his figures, grain prices rose far faster than wages, so most who died could no longer afford food.
- Born
- 3 November 1933 in Santiniketan, Bengal (then in British India)
- Nationality
- Indian
- Work
- Taught at Delhi, the London School of Economics, Oxford and Harvard; Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1998 to 2004; then back to Harvard
- Key works
- Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970), Poverty and Famines (1981), Development as Freedom (1999)
- Prize
- Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, 1998, awarded to him alone, for welfare economics
- Field
- Welfare economics, social choice theory and development economics
What Sen was reacting to
As a nine-year-old, Sen saw the Bengal famine of 1943. Famines were usually explained by a simple shortage of food, known as the food availability decline view.
In economics more widely, Sen questioned two habits: judging progress mainly by income per head, and judging welfare by adding up happiness or counting goods. Both, he thought, missed how poor the poorest were and what people could actually do.
Sen's key ideas
Can you name Sen's four key ideas?
A person's entitlement is the set of goods they can command through what they own, grow, earn or are given. Sen argued that famines often follow a collapse in some groups' entitlements, even when total food supply has not fallen much.
Can you think of an example?
Sen's figures show Bengal's food output in 1943 about 13 per cent above 1941. Between 1939 and 1943 grain prices more than quadrupled while farm wages rose by only about 30 per cent. In his account, landless labourers starved because they could no longer buy food.
Sen argued that famines rarely happen in working democracies with a free press. Elected leaders face criticism and the threat of losing office, so they have a reason to act early.
Can you think of an example?
In Maharashtra, India, in the early 1970s, a severe drought was met with public works jobs and food distribution, and no starvation deaths were recorded.
Judging well-being by what people are actually able to do and be, such as being well fed, healthy or educated. Income and goods count as means to these ends.
Can you think of an example?
Two people go hungry. One is fasting by choice and could eat; the other is starving. Their capabilities differ sharply.
The study of how individual choices can be combined into one decision for a group. Sen showed when a group can decide consistently, and that no rule for group decisions can always respect even a small area of personal freedom while also following the Pareto principle: if everyone prefers A to B, so should the group.
Can you think of an example?
A majority can prefer A to B and B to C, yet also C to A, so no option wins. With Prasanta Pattanaik, Sen found conditions on voters' rankings that prevent this.