Nutrition and Economic Destitution in Northern Ghana, 1930-1957. A Historical Perspective on Nutritional Economics

[...]This research takes Iliffe’s suggestion seriously. For the student of Sub-Saharan Africa who has decided to explore a plausible route of causationbetween nutrition and poverty, the most urgent task is to disregard the initialdiscouragement triggered by the scarcity of references. The lack of relevantdata is commonly pointed out and the contrast with the powerful insights madethroughout the last decade by development economists is striking: povertyissues have been comprehensively investigated with behavioural models thatstrive to capture household strategies to cope with nutritional inadequacy andscarcity of resources. Although these strategies potentially have immenseeffects on welfare, development and the effectiveness of public policies, therehave been few attempts to examine nutrition in less-developed countriesthrough an economic history lens.[...]