The Poorest Billion: Trapped

“Chronic poverty is that poverty that is ever present and never ceases. It is like the rains of the grasshopper season that beat you consistently and for a very long time. You become completely soaked because you have no way out. …

… Some poverty passes from one generation to another, as if the offspring sucks it from the mother’s breast. They in turn pass it on to their children.”

- Group of disabled women in Nkokonjeru Providence Home, Mukono, Uganda (source: CPRC Chronic Poverty Report 2004-5, David Hulme)


According to the Chronic Poverty Research Centre's 2004-5 report, there are up to 420 million chronically poor people in the world.  This is not including all absolutely poor people, which could still number over 1 billion; it counts those who fit a certain criteria that, when one or more of the conditions are met, causes extreme difficulty regarding economic growth.  This report lists a few of the criteria as 1) capability deprivation, 2) low levels of material assets, and 3) socio-political marginality.  These are caused in part by geographic, spatial traps, such as land-locked states surrounded by other hostile or unstable countries, as well as shocks, such as famines or diseases like HIV, that keep the constitution of the society weak.


The CPRC's report shares several things in common with the businessfightspoverty.ning.com post by Mike Quinn.  His post, reviewing a book by Paul Collier, lists four factors as the cause of poverty traps: conflict traps, natural resource traps, being landlocked with bad neighbors, and having bad governance in small countries.  


Quinn in his post describes Collier's approach toward bringing the oppressed out of these traps as being actually not to focus on poverty alleviation, but rather on economic convergence, somewhat like Sachs in Common Wealth.


The key ideas that I took as meaningful from both these sources--the CPRC's report and the post by Mike Quinn--are that first, a large portion of the poverty stricken world is due to an array of causes.  There is no quick fix.  Before throwing money at the problem, the aid suppliers must study not only the region directly to be affected by the aid, but also the surrounding countries.  The matter of poverty has become so intricate that knowing both the internal and external causes for the specific area in question is vital before any aid can be appropriated effectively.  Next, both sources declare the need to offer more than a handout.  "Aid" will only be helpful to people who will take what they have received and run with it.  The root causes in a broken society must be addressed in a way that will give the people of that society hope and assurance that something better can happen.  For example, families need to know that if they actually do sacrifice to send their child to school, their child will have a chance to use that education.  Finally, they both show the importance of giving locals work.  Aid workers cannot go into a country simply giving handouts and expect things to change.  They can't even go in and set up a business and expect the locals to pick up right where they leave off.  If there is something we, as foreigners to any society under the poverty line, can do, it would be to work with the people, keeping them in the leadership roles and decision-making processes and taking a back-seat.  Then change can be permanent, and put an end to chronic poverty.

Clinginess

Two of the many people who could be looked at in relation to the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes are Jack Kerouac and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  They come from very different backgrounds; the cultures, families, and lifestyles of each of them were quite nearly opposed.  Yet they both, as has every other person on this planet, faced the question of what in their lives is meaningful.

Ecclesiastes is the story of a man's desperation to find something worthwhile, but everywhere he looks in his successful life he finds dust and wind.  He knows none of it will last.  It isn't until he puts his hope in God that he can have any kind of peace.  The author concludes: "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an example of a life that ended in direct line with the final statement in Ecclesiastes.  Growing up, Bonhoeffer lived a life that seems like it would set someone up to live to a good old age and have a respectable life.  He studied theology in school, then went through the seminary and on to become a pastor.  However, why did he make such a splash in history, dying a martyr's death as a respected theologian and minister?  At 24 he went from his home in Germany to the "wilderness" of New York, to further his studies.  It was here that he became involved with a church congregation in Harlem.  This may have not been months of time alone in a desert, but he noted how this experience gave him the ability to see things from the perspective of the oppressed and where his theology was "turned from phraseology to reality."  This reality is what would drastically change the course of his life when it came to standing against everything in his Hitler-run native Germany.  Ultimately, he came to possess "that moral greatness which holds life and honor subservient to truth."* He found his duty as man to follow God.

Kerouac, on the other hand, was raised in a Catholic home in America and created a reputation for himself as a mournful man wandering the globe; a vagabond.  His life was filled with every kind of experimentation, and much of it was spent struggling with alcohol.  As he matured, he found himself to be a 40-something-year-old man haggard by his unhealthy lifestyle.  To get away from the pressure of his fans and get some peace, he went to a friend's cabin at Big Sur.  The peace was good for him at first, but soon he found himself spiraling downward by his alcohol and depression.  He eventually spent a horrible night in a state of delirium.  However, when he woke up the next day he felt fine, even refreshed.  In that state, he finished his book recounting this time with the phrase "There's no need to say another word."  Soon after, still in his forties, he died in his home.

What does this mean for us?  One man found something to cling to that was even more to him than life, while another man was clung to by so many things that his life was snuffed out.  They both searched for meaning and truth, they chose different paths, and they both led relatively short lives.

Maybe all we can conclude is already found in several passages from Ecclesiastes.  "So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God's hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him.  All share a common destiny--the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not."(9.1-2)  Therefore, "whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might," (9.10) since after all, "a man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction... ...from the hand of God." (2.24)

*Great Controversy, p. 216