World hunger: a structural approach

Chronic hunger is rooted in poverty and radically unequal distributions of income and assets, within and across countries. In market or quasi-market systems, the distribution of income and assets structures both food consumption patterns and food production systems. Radical inequality leads to structures which make it difficult to eliminate hunger, both because they increase the quantity of food needed to do so and because they support production structures in which the poor are “marginalized.” The effect of radical inequality is to severely limit the usefulness of “market mechanisms” as efficient instruments for reducing hunger. Marginal adjustments of existing food markets are unlikely to make any real progress in ending chronic hunger. Broadly based development and/or changes in the structuring mechanisms supported by market economies are necessary.