What impact do famines have on survivors? We use individual-level data on a population exposed to severe famine conditions during infancy to document two opposing effects. The first: exposure to insufficient food and a worsened disease environment is associated with poor health into adulthood -...

This short paper revisits two questions that were central to Joel Mokyr's Why Ireland Starved (2nd edition, 1985). These are, first, what determined the variation in population change across Ireland during the Great Famine decade of 1841-1851 and, second, whether and in what sense can pre-famine...

The Great Famine of Ireland from 1845-51 ranks as one of the most lethal of all time, claiming approximately one eighth of the country's population. Utilizing local Famine Relief Commission reports to develop a micro-level dataset of blight severity, I find that districts more severely infected...