Understanding poverty

1. Understanding poverty NicSpaull.com | @NicSpaull Guest lecture: Theology Department 21 August 2013

2. Is Kaya poor? “Kaya, four, lives with her parents in a small apartment in Tokyo, Japan. Her bedroom is lined from floor to ceiling with clothes and dolls. Kaya’s mother makes all her dresses – Kaya has 30 dresses and coats, 30 pairs of shoes and numerous wigs. When she goes to school, she has to wear a school uniform. Her favourite foods are meat, potatoes, strawberries and peaches. She wants to be a cartoonist when she grows up.”

3. Is Indira poor? • “Indira, seven, lives with her parents, brother and sister near Kathmandu in Nepal. Her house has only one room, with one bed and one mattress. At bedtime, the children share the mattress on the floor. Indira has worked at the local granite quarry since she was three. The family is very poor so everyone has to work. There are 150 other children working at the quarry. Indira works six hours a day and then helps her mother with household chores. She also attends school, 30 minutes’ walk away. Her favourite food is noodles. She would like to be a dancer when she grows up”

4. Is Dong poor? • “Dong, nine, lives in Yunnan province in south-west China with his parents, sister and grandfather. He shares a room with his sister and parents. The family own just enough land to grow their own rice and sugarcane. Dong’s school is 20 minutes’ walk away. He enjoys writing and singing. Most evenings, he spends one hour doing his homework and one hour watching television. When he is older, Dong would like to be a policeman.”

5. Is Paballo poor?

6. Human rights • “The notion of human right builds on our shared humanity. These rights are not derived from the citizenship of any country, or the membership of any nation, but are presumed to be claims or entitlements of every human being. They differ, therefore, from constitutionally created rights guaranteed for specific people.” ― AmartyaSen, The Idea Of Justice

7. Poverty What is poverty? • “Poverty is the inability of an individual or a family to command sufficient resources to satisfy basic needs” (Fields Ch4) Money-metric or multi-dimensional framework? • Income and expenditure justified as poverty measure partly because of presumed correlation with well-being and empowerment. • Important to understand that money is not end in itself, but means to an end • $ correlated with food, shelter, nutrition etc but not well correlated with access to public services, safety, human rights etc • AmartyaSen = Godfather

8. What is poverty really? • When the poor are asked to characterise what it means to be poor, they use phrases like: • Isolation from the community • A lack of security • Low wages • A lack of jobs • Poor nutrition • Little access to water • Poor educational opportunities • (May, 1998 in Finn et al 2013)

9. Multidimensional poverty Figure 1: The composition of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (Finn et al 2013) Anyone who is deprived in more than 3 of the dimensions is classified as multidimensionally poor

10. MDP • For example, a household is classified as deprived in terms of: • Schooling if no household member has at least 5 years of education • Enrolment if one child of school-going age does not go to school • Water deprivation is defined as not having piped water on site • Deprivation in child mortality is indicated by a child having died before age 15 • Nutritional deprivation is indicated if one person in the household is seriously underweight • See Arden 2013 for full definitions • What are some of the problems with this method?

11. MDI Comparing poverty measures for South Africa for 1993 and 2010 (Finn et al, 2013) “This means that the 8% who remained multidimensionally poor in 2010 were deprived in fewer dimensions of poverty than in 1993: roughly, in four areas instead of five (on average). When the changes in H and A are taken together, they indicate that in 2010 there were significantly fewer multidimensionally poor people; and that those who were still poor, were somewhat less poor than in 1993.” Severe poverty can be defined as being deprived in 50% or more of the indicators

12. Sources of deprivation?

13. Main areas of deprivation among the multidimensionally poor

14. Conclusion on MDP? • “Between 1993 and 2010 the reduction in multidimensional poverty was significant and notably higher than the concomitant fall in money-metric poverty. Thus, significant increases in public expenditure to attain universal school enrolment, to reduce child mortality and expand access to services such as electricity and sanitation to poor communities have been very effective in reducing multidimensional poverty.” Finn et al 2013

15. OK, but what about inequality?

16. “Only a small top-end of households – less than 4% of all South African households – receive a total household income of more than R40,000 per month (for a four-person household, in 2008 Rands).” – Visagie 2013

18. Inequality - SA

19. Education is the key… • “Fairly universally poverty reduction is seen as unlikely unless knowledge, skill and capabilities are extended to those who are marginalised from value-added economic activity by illiteracy, lack of numeracy, and higher level reasoning that links causes and effects rationally. In most societies, and especially those that are developing rapidly, households and individuals value participation in education and invest substantially in pursuing the benefits it can confer. The rich have few doubts that the investments pay off; the poor generally share the belief and recognise that increasingly mobility out of poverty is education-related, albeit that their aspirations and expectations are less frequently realized” (Lewin, 2007, p. 2).

20. Labour Market • University/FET • Type of institution (FET or University) • Quality of institution • Type of qualification(diploma, degree etc.) • Field of study (Engineering, Arts etc.) • High productivity jobs and incomes (17%) • Mainly professional, managerial & skilled jobs • Requires graduates, good quality matric or good vocational skills • Historically mainly white High quality secondaryschool Unequal society High SES background +ECD High quality primary school Minority (20%) Some motivated, lucky or talented students make the transition • Vocational training • Affirmative action • Big demand for good schools despite fees • Some scholarships/bursaries Majority (80%) Quality Type Attainment Low quality secondary school • Low productivity jobs & incomes • Often manual or low skill jobs • Limited or low quality education • Minimum wage can exceed productivity Low SES background Low quality primary school cf. Servaas van der Berg – QLFS 2011

21. Why do we care about poverty/inequality? • Political  political stability & democracy • Ethical  Human rights • Justice  Inter-temporal justice • Social justice  Religious motivations • Societal  Innate preference for equality • Survival  Wasted human capital • Philosophical  Ubuntu, egalitarianism

22. Conclusion • Unless we have an understanding of what poverty actually is, we can’t try and eliminate it. • Pros and Cons of money-metric vs MDI poverty • Inequality as a national poverty? • Education as the solution • More than economic motivations • Social stability and politics • Shared humanity and dignity (Ubuntu)

23. Comments and questions?

25. Not all schools are born equal ? Pretoria Boys High School SA public schools?

26. Education and inequality? • IQ • Motivation • Social networks • Discrimination

27. Is Anonymous poor? “Home for this boy and his family is a mattress in a field on the outskirts of Rome, Italy. The family came from Romania by bus, after begging for money to pay for their tickets. When they arrived in Rome, they camped on private land, but the police threw them off. They have no identity papers, so cannot obtain legal work. The boy’s parents clean car windscreens at traffic lights. No one from his family has ever been to school.”

28. Is Indira poor? • Roathy, eight, lives on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. His home sits on a huge rubbish dump. Roathy’s mattress is made from old tyres. Five thousand people live and work here. At six every morning, Roathy and hundreds of other children are given a shower at a local charity centre before they start work, scavenging for cans and plastic bottles, which are sold to a recycling company. Breakfast is often the only meal of the day.