Chapter 3 in E. Wayne Nafziger, Frances Stewart, and Raimo Väyrynen, eds., War, Hunger, and Displacement: The Origins of Humanitarian Emergencies. Vol. 1. Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Abstract. This chapter shows how slow economic growth, the failure of food and agricultural development, high income concentration, rapid inflation, lack of external adjustment, the threat of slow growth and adverse distribution to elites, higher military expenditures, and authoritarian regimes increase the vulnerability of developing countries to humanitarian emergencies. The authors demonstrate that a major factor responsible for the increase in emergencies in the 1990s is the developing world's stagnation and protracted decline in incomes, primarily in the 1980s. A major contributor to slow growth is agricultural stagnation. Slow or negative per capita growth, which is often accompanied by a chronic external disequilibrium, necessitates stabilization and adjustment; those countries whose adjustment policies fail, so that they do not qualify for the IMF "Good Housekeeping seal," are more vulnerable to humanitarian disaster. A second factor, high income inequality, contributes to regional, ethnic, and class discrepancies that engendered crises. A third contributor, inflation, increases popular discontent, especially among low-income classes. A fourth factor, the strategies of political elites in response to stagnation, inequality, inflation, and adjustment, and mass reaction to these changes, is instrumental in determining the potential for political conflict and humanitarian emergencies. A fifth explanation for emergencies is military centrality, which can spur conflicts as well as increase poverty. A sixth factor, the tradition for violent conflict, in which violence becomes normatively justifiable in a society, increases the probability of conflict-driven humanitarian crises. These factors suggest that the international community, to reduce complex humanitarian emergencies, needs to facilitate widespread growth, support developing countries in reducing disparities in income and wealth, assist poor countries in adjusting to external and internal equilibria, promote good governance, and reduce trade in arms and weapons.