This 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.

中文翻译：

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收入不平等和饥荒死亡率：来自 1860 年代芬兰饥荒的证据

本文探讨经济不平等是否加剧了饥荒期间收成、价格和收入冲击的不利影响。使用来自 1860 年代芬兰饥荒的教区级纵向数据集，它表明在饥荒期间经历的超额死亡率的很大一部分是由于农业生产下降、收入下降和食品价格飙升造成的。研究结果表明，收入不平等加剧和平均收入下降加剧了粮食产量波动的不利影响，而可支配收入收缩削弱了市场传递的冲击。结果得到了多种替代估计技术的证实，包括引入空间溢出。