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Poverty on a 62-foot yacht in the Pacific Ocean
By Lykke E. Andersen*,
La Paz,
22
January
2007.
Most of the people who write about poverty have never themselves
been poor (including myself). This is not so strange, since the
poor are too poor to write, even if some of them have the
ability. They do not have the surplus of energy and time alone
that is required to sit down and write to record or transmit
their feelings, thoughts and ideas. They do not write blogs or
diaries and they virtually never get hired as consultants to
study poverty.
Might
it be the case that the ones writing about poverty don’t really
understand it?
In the unlikeliest of places, as a guest on a 12-person sailboat
touring the World, I got to experience some of the problems that
poor people face every day: The whole family cramped in a tiny
room with no privacy whatsoever; a hot shower a rare luxury;
trying too keep the children’s clothes clean a struggle against
all odds; fish biting at much too irregular intervals; and daily
chores taking up all ones time and energy.
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It is surprising how quickly you can get used to that lifestyle,
though. You don’t really need a bath every day, and there are
always some clothes that are cleaner than others. The
uncomfortable sleeping arrangements get compensated by more
hours of sleep, and the lack of privacy is a natural
anti-contraceptive. The lack of TV is simply a blessing, and the
free pleasures of playing on the beach, hiking in the mountains,
cooking a self-caught fish, and chatting under the stars seems
to be enjoyed so much more than the expensive trips to museums
and fancy restaurants. Nine-to-five work gets distinctly
unattractive: It is physically impossible, and who would want it
anyway?
There seems to me to be four main situations in the world:
1)
You are poor in a rural area, living off the land with
plenty of time to spend with family and friends. You don’t have
to worry about somebody stealing your stuff and you don’t feel
any pressure to “keep up with the Jones’s.” Neighbors and family
members usually share generously if some are more fortunate than
others. You know little and therefore worry little about the
rest of the world. Your main problems are likely to be health
related, but, as there is little you can do about them, death is
accepted without much fuss as a natural event.
2)
You are poor in an urban area and have to work very hard
to earn enough money just to shelter, feed and clothe your
family. You likely work in a small family business, still
spending lots of time with the family, but you may also have to
do some stints of long, arduous hours in larger factories. You
are likely to have access to public goods such as education,
piped water, sanitation, hospitals, roads, TV and Internet, and
through this you learn how unequal the world really is, and how
relatively unattractive your current situation is.
3)
You are well-off, but have to work hard to maintain the
image expected of somebody with your level of wealth. This
implies too little time to enjoy with family and friends, so you
are at risk of dying lonely and unhappy of some stress-induced
illness. You are insured against theft, fire, unemployment,
accidents, disease, death, etc, but that does not prevent bad
things from happening.
4)
You are rich without having to work too hard for it. This
is a quite heterogeneous group including those who inherited
wealth, those who won it, those who married into it, those who
have some special talents and worked hard to develop them, and
those who exploit their fellow citizens. Almost by definition,
only a minority can be rich without hard work
(1). This condition could theoretically keep you comfortable
for a very long time, but I am not sure it will make you happy.
It seems that most rich people have plenty of problems in their
lives, and if not, they create artificial problems and worries,
for example by climbing mountains, crossing oceans in small
sailboats, or trying to look like Barbie.
This is
obviously an oversimplification
(2), but if 1 to 3 roughly
outlines the road from poverty to richness (and 4 is reserved
for a small lucky minority), then it is not so strange that
increased wealth has not been accompanied by increased
happiness, as recent research suggests it hasn’t
(3).
And perhaps it is not so strange either that it is difficult to
get people out of poverty. Stage 2 and 3 do not exactly look
attractive if you are used to a life with independence,
flexibility and fresh air, even if you don’t have much money.
I am sure most poor people would be happy to jump directly to 4,
but maybe they don’t think that the money they would earn in 2
and 3 is worth the sacrifices they would have to make.
I think earned income is a really lousy measure of
welfare/happiness. Maybe it would be more accurate to measure
welfare by how many hours of leisure (family time, hobbies,
sports, traveling, studying, reading, art work, gardening,
playing, etc) you can afford per year and poverty by how many
hours of work you have to do per week. (If you really love your
work, it could be considered a profitable hobby, and thus count
as leisure).
Studies that use earnings per hour worked as a measure of
welfare do indirectly value leisure, so they are probably not
too bad. But most studies on poverty do not take into account
the value of being your own boss and being able to choose how
many hours you want to work and when. They implicitly impose the
same set of preferences on all people – a set of preferences
that value diamonds and flat screen TVs highly, but attaches no
value to personal time, flexibility, independence, nature,
exercise, and freedom from worrying about terrorists, global
warming and species extinction.
If you are rich enough, you can buy back some time, freedom,
nature, exercise, etc (for example by sailing around the world
or climbing Himalaya), and you will have come full circle.
(*) Director, Institute for Advanced Development Studies, La
Paz, Bolivia. The author happily receives comments at the
following e-mail:
landersen@inesad.edu.bo.
(1) Obviously, we can’t all win the lottery and we can’t all
live from stealing from each other. Somebody has to work to
generate that wealth.
(2) In some places, due to overpopulation, the rural population
does not have enough land to be able to live on it. But at least
in Bolivia, poor rural children are usually better fed than poor
urban children (according to data from the Demographic and
Health Survey of 2003).
(3) For references, see the Christmas edition of The
Economist.
Ó
Institute for Advanced Development Studies 2006.
The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the
author and do not necessarily coincide with those of the Institute.
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