Income inequality and famine mortality: Evidence from the Finnish famine of the 1860s

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines whether economic inequality intensified the adverse effects of harvest, price, and income shocks during a famine. Using a parish‐level longitudinal dataset from the Finnish famine of the 1860s, it shows that a substantial proportion of the excess mortality experienced during the famine resulted from a decline in agricultural production, a decline in incomes, and a surge in food prices. The findings indicate that the adverse effects of food output fluctuations were intensified by increasing income inequality and decreasing average income, while the market‐transmitted shocks were weakened by a contraction of disposable income. The results are corroborated with multiple alternative estimation techniques, including the introduction of spatial spill‐overs. The results show that even a pre‐industrial famine affecting an impoverished society was meaningfully defined by the distribution of incomes.