Poverty

I

Kwame Owino of the Institute of Economic Affairs, one of our finer think tanks (I'm shamelessly sucking up), threw down the gauntlet and challenged someone to write a thinkpiece on poverty. If it was up to scratch, he'd publish it in the Institute's journal. I took up that challenge and then came to the inevitable conclusion: I don't know anything bout poverty. So I begged off and he let the matter lie. But it has occupied a greater than usual amount of my few thinking moments and so I have decided to give it another shot. Here goes.

I have read through policy papers by the Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis and economic statistics by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics ad I am yet to find the one that has a working definition of poverty. Both institutions say a lot about poverty: how many are poor; how many are poor in rural areas or urban areas; how many are poor this year as opposed to how many were poor last year; how many have been lifted out of poverty and how many have fallen into poverty; and so on and so forth. But neither defines poverty.

I am a lawyer by profession. My profession relies on words and the meaning of words. The context n which certain words are used is important. So I find it curious that institutions of the Government of Kenya have a lot to say about poverty but do not have a working definition of it. Perhaps, like me, they rely on definitions supplied by other organisations or institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund.

II

The United Nations stated in 1995 that, fundamentally, poverty is the inability of getting choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.

The UN definition of poverty focuses on all aspects of human life: political, social, economic, environmental, legal. For a lawyer like me I am glad that few numbers are bandied about in the UN definition, but that seems, somehow, wrong. 

The World bank has a more concise definition of poverty: the pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life.

The World bank definition covers the same ground as the UN definition and is, also, blessedly free of numbers and so, too, feels somewhat wrong. The International Monetary Fund borrows the World Bank's definition.

III

We are conditioned by all the statistics bandied about by policy-makers to think of poverty in terms of numbers rather than what it is or what it means. The definition, the meaning, of poverty is lost in the statistics. That, I think, is wrong or, at least, misguided.

Think about it. Poverty means a lack of choices or very few choices: whether to eat or visit a healthcare facility; whether to be properly dressed or eat; whether to sleep indoors or be properly dressed; whether to attend school or work for food. Poverty means that the ability to acquire - such a lawyers' word - food, shelter (not housing), clothes or medicine is limited, or it doesn't exist at all. Poverty means that even if one has shelter, a roof over their head, piped clean water is mostly unavailable; that they definitely do not have an indoor toilet - that is, they must leaver their shelter in order to "go to the toilet" even though when they do "go" it is often ot in a toilet at all.

Poverty also means that when their safety is threatened, they will likely suffer; that when a public policy is being implemented, even in their name, they will unlikely participate in the making of that policy; that when they are given a choice between visiting a public park to rest or relax, or to put in a day's work form minimum wages, they will choose the latter over the former every time.

The measurements of poverty - the numbers - are important, if only to tell us how many are poor, the nature of their poverty, perhaps even the causes of their poverty, and the impact of public policies in the reduction of the total numbers of the poor an the general. But the numbers shouldn't obscure that poverty is about people and their lives. If the numbers don't tell you how many children are employed informally rather than attending school, they are largely useless. If they do not demonstrate why a family will choose shelter over healthcare, then they are meaningless. The numbers must be in the service of explaining why a choice between shelter and healthcare, shelter over food, work over school, is made.

IV

Royal Media's Citizen Live on Sunday, I think, once did a story about an elderly woman and her grandson living in Mathare Valley. She must have been in her sixties or seventies; he was probably eight or nine. They shared a 10 feet by 10 feet shelter that was their sitting room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and study room, for the boy was in primary school. Their shelter was somewhere in the depths of Mathare Valley; an open sewer ran past their front door. 

They did not have electricity, running water or an indoor toilet. Her eyesight was failing, but she didn't seem to suffer from any chronic illness; he was healthier because of her sacrifices. They cooked in their shelter using a charcoal-burning jiko which was also her work jiko over which she cooked chapati and mandazi for sale. She needed his help to get from their shelter to her place of business - the side of the road - before he walked off to a "private" school for which she paid three hundred shillings every month.

By all measures, they are poor. She is old and her health challenges will eventually become chronic challenges and her ability to care for the boy will be limited. She is already going blind, and the use of charcoal for cooking will accelerate the rate at which she loses her eyesight. She may yet adapt to her failing eyesight but at some point she will be unable to earn a living preparing her chapati or mandazi for sale. The boy may be compelled to leave school and become her primary caregiver just as she is for him right now. Between the rent she pays for their shelter, the school "fees" she pays for the boy, and how much she sets aside for supplies and his school supplies, she cannot afford healthcare, let alone a visit to a specialist to tend to her failing eyesight. I wonder when the boy will drop out of school: before or after he sits for his KCPE?

V

I highlight this family because they are not absolutely poor; they have some measure of "wealth": a shelter, at least one meal a day, access to limited economic opportunity. Though they are far from comfortable, they are not too uncomfortable. But in the circumstances they find themselves, the boy and his grandmother will need extraordinary luck or positive benefits from effective public policies to escape their poverty. These are the people that the statistics and the numbers address as "poverty".

I do not have the answers; for that I shall defer to the far superior minds of Mr Owino and his colleagues. I would however urge them not to simply rely on the raw numbers but to also rely on narratives from amateurs and laymen like me. We may not always have answers but, hopefully, we may help shape the way solutions are found and applied.