Expanding the Solow Growth Model. Would preventing starvation be beneficial to the overall income?

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Economics - Economic Cycle and Growth, grade: 1,0, Quest University Canada, course: Poverty, Inequality & Development, language: English, abstract: The need for nutritional intake is probably the most fundamental physical need of human beings. Still, although many people have never experienced starvation, almost one billion in the world are suffering from malnourishment in our world. This is surely an undesirable condition itself. This paper further expands on the problem of malnourishment, by arguing that it decreases the effectiveness of labor and thus has a negative effect on total production and growth. There is wide evidence in the academic literature on the damaging effects of malnourishment, ranging from restricted human development, especially of children, to increased mortality rates. These papers have shown that starvation negatively affects both physical and mental abilities, which gives reason to assume decreased effectiveness of labor as a result of malnourishment. According to the United Nations, we will define those suffering from malnourishment as the "people whose dietary energy consumption is continuously below a minimum dietary energy requirement for maintaining a healthy life and carrying out a light physical activity'' (Patel, 2012). The proposed model is intended to demonstrate that preventing starvation may be beneficial to overall income. It does notclaim thatreducinghungerdoesnot have othervalues.Aswearedealing with aglobal problem, the model will represent the world economy as one economy, so that national income equals global income.