Abstract This article examines whether economic inequality intensified the adverse effects of harvest, price, and income shocks during a famine. Using parish‐level longitudinal dataset from Finnish famine 1860s, it shows that substantial proportion excess mortality experienced resulted decline in agricultural production, incomes, surge food prices. The findings indicate output fluctuations were...

Since 1950, global poverty and child mortality rates have declined more rapidly than during any other period in history. Progress has been uneven, however, so that inequalities have widened; since the 1970s, an increasing number of countries have experienced periods of prolonged economic decline. Eighty countries now have per capita incomes lower than in 1990. Partly in consequence, indicators ...