The ‘disadvantaged’ will here be taken to comprise the very poor, the victims of intra-family discrimination and in some cases minority groups. ‘Poor’ is, of course, a relative term, but Lipton (1986) has identified a group, whom he calls the ultra-poor, whose access to food is so tenuous that they can in effect be regarded as a separate group in society. The ultra-poor follow what he calls the ‘two 80 per cent rule’, that is they tend to eat ‘below 80 per cent of FAO/WHO (1973) weight-adjusted dietary energy requirements, despite spending at least 80 per cent of income on food’. Hence the members of this group ‘eat so little food as to be at significant risk of not meeting their dietary energy requirement’ (ibid., p. 4). They are set apart by the fact that there are ‘quite sharp turning points in food behaviour’ between them and ‘everyone else’. Lipton distinguishes several such turning points. First, this is the only group which characteristically spends a constant proportion of income on food even when income rises slightly. Second, they have ‘sharply higher’ child/adult ratios. Third, they are ‘especially likely to be landless, or (in semi-arid areas) to operate below five acres or so’ and are correspondingly dependent upon casual labour. Finally, unlike people who are merely poor, lower income does not induce higher participation in work among the ultrapoor ‘perhaps because they are too often hungry or ill’.