Poverty is not a good target

Why a focus on poverty or categories of people is inadequate

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One of the commonplace statements in aid programmes is that the rich-poor divide throughout the world continues to grow, and that those who are poorest have the burden of ill-health, lack of opportunity, lack of services and lack of access to a variety of resources.

As a result, there are all sorts of programmes to reduce poverty, provide social protection, increase services to the poor or most distant, and to provide resources for the poorest.

Indeed it is true that the poorest and a variety of under-resourced populations have greater problems with health and opportunity than the richest and most powerful. This is recognised, for example, in the numerous Demographic and Health Surveys conducted regularly throughout the world -- as shown in the following diagram:

What is less generally recognised is that there is a further imbalance amongst those labelled as 'poor', or indeed amongst any who have any particular label identifying them as 'in need' -- such as disabled, orphans, people with chronic illnesses, landless, lower caste, etc. And this imbalance is startling because even amongst the poorest it is only a minority that have the most problems, as is seen in the following diagram taken from the same Demographic Survey in Nigeria in 2008:

The essays on this site explore the failure of most aid programmes to focus on this imbalance amongst people in any particular category, and reflects many of the concerns I have had about aid programmes ever since my first posting to Nigeria as a medical student in 1974.

The Central Concern

There have been many articles over the last 100 years or so decrying the fact that aid or charity avoids any consideration of the political situations that reinforce inequalities between people. The essays on this site do not relate to that controversy. Instead they probe much deeper. This is because in most aid programmes there is an almost complete denial of the existence of ordinary human emotions, conflicts, norms, and of the enormous complexity of human interactions.

There is often a disregard for the jealousy, hatred, dislike, history, love, passion, play, concern, fear, and the myriad of emotions or thoughts that make up daily lives.

This disregard for such ordinary human interactions permeates even those programmes that seek political change, establishment of human rights, assurance of justice and various types of promotion of 'equality'.

The reason this matters is because it is exactly these ordinary, everyday emotions and interactions that play a huge part in determining who suffers, who is ill, who dies, and who does not.

Reasons for the failure

Packages of aid (charitable or other) are almost entirely influenced by political expediency, compassion or financial/professional benefit. These influences may or may not be malign, but they certainly mould any programme into one whose definition of 'success' depends on compliance with the intentions of the aid giver. Therefore evaluations of the programme will depend on the extent to which compliance has been achieved.

Reports of such programmes will inevitably focus on the level of compliance of numbers of people who fit into the categories targeted by the programme. Almost never reported are the numbers of people who fail to comply and who, in fact, may be in far more need of support than those who did comply.

The lack of focus on the minority who have the most problems is simply a question of numbers. Aid agencies have found it is complex and costly to work for the benefit of the least powerful, the most isolated, the least supported, or the most marginalised. It is far easier for them to provide quick fixes for those whose situations allow them to access services or follow the requirements of the aid programmes. I have been in many conversations with international donors and NGOs where they make explicit this fact.

The Poor-Poor Divide

My belief is that it is not necessarily that hard to alter programmes to include a focus on those who need the most support. The apparent difficulty from the donors' perspective in recognising those who need the most support may well result from their use of generalised categories used to define the 'needy'. Thus we have 'the poor', 'women', 'single parent households', 'orphans', 'disabled', 'illiterate', as well as hosts of people in various ethnic, economic, political, cultural or 'disadvantaged' categories. Whilst there is no doubt that many in such categories really are under-supported or in need, there are also very large numbers in any such categories who are quite content with their lives.

Equally, there are many not in those categories who face enormous difficulties in their lives and require external support.

I have therefore deliberately coined a phrase -- the Poor-Poor Divide -- that reflects the fact that within any category targeted by aid programmes, there are deep divisions which reflect the fact that many in these categories have little need of additional support whilst others do.

The paper on 'The Poor-Poor Divide' on this site provides an analysis of how this was researched in Northern Nigeria. The paper shows the enormous importance of various types of support within families, along with the respect given to individuals, in determining the extent to which a woman suffers deaths amongst her children. It also shows how the vested interests of donors prevent the proposed actions from being implemented.

The other papers, in their various ways, reflect this kind of concern.

There are also plenty of hints as to how to organise work so that it does benefit those who need the most support.

Comments on any of the pages are entirely welcome whether you disagree or agree. There are no easy answers or analyses for any of the critiques I have provided.

Tony Klouda