S7 Ep23: How killing sparrows contributed to the Great Chinese Famine

About this episode

The episode discusses how the eradication of sparrows during the Great Chinese Famine contributed to agricultural decline and mass starvation.

Between 1959 and 1961, between thirty and forty million people starved to death in China. The Great Famine had many causes, and one of them was a campaign to eradicate sparrows. Shaoda Wang of the University of Chicago tells Tim Phillips about Mao Zedong's 1958 Four Pests Campaign, which led to the mass killing of sparrows, set off a chain of consequences that scientists had warned about, but political pressure had silenced. Sparrows eat crops, but they also eat the locusts and other insects that destroy the crops. Remove the sparrows and the pests go unchecked. Wang and his co-authors estimate the eradication cut national grain yields by 8-9%, accounting for roughly a fifth of the total agricultural decline during the famine. The research behind this episode: Frank, Eyal G., Qinyun Wang, Shaoda Wang, Xuebin Wang, and Yang You. 2024. "Campaigning for Extinction: Eradication of Sparrows and the Great Famine in China." NBER Working Paper 34087. To cite this episode: Phillips, Tim, and Shaoda Wang. 2025. "How killing sparrows contributed to the Great Chinese Famine.” VoxDev Talk (podcast). Assign this as extra listening. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list…

People in this episode

Host: Tim Phillips

Guest: Shaoda Wang

Topics covered

• Great Chinese Famine
• environmental economics
• political economy
• agricultural decline
• Four Pests Campaign

Keywords

• sparrows
• Great Chinese Famine
• Four Pests Campaign
• agricultural decline
• environmental economics
• political economy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Chicago, NBER

Books & works: Campaigning for Extinction: Eradication of Sparrows and the Great Famine in China

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