Famine Demography

Tim Dyson is Professor of Population Studies at the London School of Economics. Educated in England and Canada, he has held Visiting Fellowships at the Australian National University in Canberra and the International Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai. In 1994-96 he was President of the British Society for Population Studies and in 1997 he addressed the Oxford Farming Conference. His main areas of research have been on the analysis of demographic time series, interactions between populations and their food supplies, and the past, present, and future population of the Indian subcontinent. He is currently working on an international project on the future of India, funded by the Wellcome Trust. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001.Cormac Ó Gráda is Professor in the Department of Economics at University College, Dublin.

• 1. Introduction ; 2. Famine disease and famine mortality: lessons from the Irish experience, 1845-50 ; 3. The workhouses and Irish famine mortality ; 4. Famine mortality in nineteenth century Finland: is there a sex bias? ; 5. Famine in Berar, 1896-97 and 1899-1900: echoes and chain reactions ; 6. Famines and epidemics: an Indian historical perspective ; 7. Famine yesterday and today in Burundi ; 8. Famine in nineteenth and twentieth century Russia: mortality by age, cause and gender ; 9. 'Send us food or coffins': the 1942-42 famine on the Aegean island of Syros ; 10. The demographic impact of a mild famine in an African city: the case of Antananarivo, 1985-87 ; 11. The frequency of famines as demographic correctives in the Japanese past ; 12. Famine and the female mortality advantage