 2003 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0013-0079/2004/5201-0003$10.00 The Causes of China’s Great Leap Famine, 1959–1961* James Kai-sing Kung Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Justin Yifu Lin Peking University I. Introduction Aroused by the unexpected magnitude of excess deaths estimated by Western demographers, 1 recently there has been a revival of interest in the causes of the Great Chinese famine of 1958–61. 2 Depending on the underlying as- sumptions and methodologies employed, the excess deaths of this famine are estimated to range from a minimum of 16.5 million to as many as 30 million. 3 With a population of roughly 660 million in 1958, the year marking the origin of this famine, 30 million amounted to a loss of close to 5% of the country’s population. 4 Moreover, the loss of lives of this magnitude occurred within an incredibly short period of time; within 2 years the country’s death rate was doubled from slightly below 12 per thousand in 1958 to 25 per thousand in 1960, making it “the worst famine in human history.” 5 Pinning down the exact cause(s) of this famine is clearly a Herculean endeavor. In part data availability presents a problem, but what makes the analysis daunting is that this famine occurred at a time of “profound social upheaval and disorganization,” to borrow the words of Carl Riskin, which makes it difficult to isolate the effect of a number of relevant factors. 6 This may explain why current studies have focused on only one single factor as explanation, such as excessive grain procurement, wasteful communal dining, and politics, or at the most two—food availability decline (FAD) and urban bias. 7 There is hardly any doubt that all these factors must have played a role in causing the excess deaths during the Leap; the relevant question is one of assessing their joint significance within a comprehensive analytical framework using appropriate proxies, which is the primary goal of this study. For example, given that grain output had fallen for three consecutive years beginning from 1958, FAD was arguably a possible culprit. 8 By the same token, the fact that