Share of famine-relief articles

Share of articles mentioning relief, famine or crop failure, by year, with sample precision.

1.2%of articles have a relief or famine keyword · precision 0.81

Key point

With 81% precision, relief and famine articles point to real crises and relief measures; the peaks in the 1670–71 and 1695–96 famines make the series a first draft of a famine chronology.

Formula: Keyword articles / all articles
How to read it: Check whether peaks appear in the great famines of 1670–71 and 1695–96.
Caveats: Stock phrases used in general argument were coded 'no' in the sample.

Reliability card: sampledSampled precision — share of keyword hits that mean what the metric says, measured on a coded stratified sample
Precision 80.6% (Wilson 95% 71.9%–87.1%) on a coded stratified sample of 103 articles (10 per 50-year period, principal editions). The 2 articles left undecided were counted as 'no'. The codebook and all judgments can be downloaded from the Data page.

By reign (principal editions, dated articles).

Reign	Dated articles	Keyword articles	Share
Taejo	2,251	13	0.58%
Jeongjong	624	5	0.80%
Taejong	10,336	129	1.25%
Sejong	30,948	601	1.94%
Munjong	2,670	26	0.97%
Danjong	2,532	19	0.75%
Sejo	10,806	75	0.69%
Yejong	1,501	6	0.40%
Seongjong	32,438	372	1.15%
Yeonsangun	12,006	72	0.60%
Jungjong	39,658	518	1.31%
Injong	667	0	0.00%
Myeongjong	15,042	289	1.92%
Seonjo	26,679	235	0.88%
Gwanghaegun	18,805	77	0.41%
Injo	16,041	265	1.65%
Hyojong	5,427	97	1.79%
Hyeonjong	9,291	316	3.40%
Sukjong	24,205	362	1.50%
Gyeongjong	2,740	25	0.91%
Yeongjo	36,725	326	0.89%
Jeongjo	17,670	232	1.31%
Sunjo	15,520	106	0.68%
Heonjong	3,979	19	0.48%
Cheoljong	5,764	3	0.05%
Gojong	27,939	130	0.47%
Sunjong	1,386	1	0.07%

Share by year. Bands: the great famines of 1670–71 and 1695–96.

Download CSV: e_relief.csv