This paper attempts to explain the pervasive problems of poverty and hunger of the developing countries in terms of the internal tendencies of their socicio-technical organization. The analysis is based on a generic system dynamics model of an agrarian economy which determines income distribution and food adequacy endogeneously but treats government policy as exogenous. It is suggested that the policies such as agricultural development, financial and technical assistance for the poor, and population control, that directly address the symptoms of the problems of poverty and hunger, may be defeated in the long run since socio- technical arrangements of the system favor persistence of poverty and vulnerability to food shortage. These policies will, however, be successful if concomitant efforts are also made to reduce income inequality through fiscal measures and to build up a food slack in the system through obtaining food calories uneconomically from cereal production.

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Date created

• 1985

Type

• Document

Processing Activity

• Processing documentation available at: https://wiki.albany.edu/display/SCA/Processing+Ingested+Digital+Files

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International

  
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ITEM CONTEXT

Part of

11576afb39e5cd4a779a3912c119ca81

Scope and Contents

Part of

8cc5e98280358f60c3a33cc99e75a20e

Scope and Contents

Part of

23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8

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Collection

System Dynamic Society Records

Scope and Contents

Collecting area

• This collection is part of the University Archives