2025/05/01 by Syed Mansoob Murshed, Scott Gates, Rashel Hasan +1 · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Agricultural risk and resilience #Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations #Political Conflict and Governance
paper · pdf · doi:10.1515/peps-2024-0059
openalex publication_date 2025/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract We examine the relationship between food insecurity and urban social disorder, featuring the degree of inequality and levels of governmental repression. We develop a formal theoretical model, and our empirical results suggest that food price volatility contributes significantly to conflict events as measured by the PRIO Urban Social Disorder data. We measure vertical inequality using the V-DEM egalitarian index, which is negatively significant; greater inequality sparks unrest. Inter-group horizontal inequality is also statistically significantly related to the risk of food riots. Government transfers are weakly associated with reducing conflict incidence. Governmental repression, in contrast, is associated with food riots across our estimations.