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What the Poor Say
What Makes the Good Life
Despite diversity and location specificity, there is a striking commonality of
experience across countries, cultures, rural and urban areas, and age and gender divides.
People explained wellbeing and illbeing in terms of five related dimensions: material
wellbeing, physical wellbeing, security, freedom of choice and action, and good social
relations.
We eat when we have, we sleep when we don’t. Ethiopia.
Not surprisingly, lack of food, shelter, clothing, poor housing and uncertain
livelihood sources were critical and mentioned everywhere. Having enough to eat the whole
year round was mentioned again and again in many countries, as was the possession of
assets. In rural areas this took the form of land with secure tenure, together with assets
that allowed cultivation and a good harvest. In urban areas, capital to start a business,
access to loans, and above all dependable work were stressed. In Argentina, it was said:
"You have work, and you are fine. If not, you starve. It is so."
In the urban areas of countries that have undergone severe crises of economic
restructuring, study teams were shocked to learn about quiet and hidden starvation. Those
who starve are often too proud to beg and too decent to steal. The research team in Russia
wrote, "a woman told us that sometimes she did not have food for several days and was
only drinking hot water and lying in bed not to spend energy."
My children were hungry and I told them the rice is cooking, until they fell asleep
from hunger. An older man, Egypt.
Poor people cannot improve their status because they live day by day, and if they
get sick then they are in trouble because they have to borrow money and pay interest. Tra
Vinh, Vietnam.
Each day there is a funeral in a nearby village because of distance to the hospital.
Musanya, Zambia.
Physical health, strength and appearance are of great importance to the poor. This is
not just for reasons of compassion for close relatives and friends, or because of concern
for personal wellbeing. It is for quintessentially economic reasons. The body is poor
people’s main asset, but one with no insurance. If it deteriorates, hunger and
destitution hover at the doorstep. As a man in Ethiopia said, "I told you. All I need
is peace and health." Bad living and working conditions, together with material
poverty, make a person highly vulnerable to becoming weak through sickness, or to
permanent disability or death through illness and accident. Shortage of food and sickness
not only cause pain, they weaken and devalue the asset. Poor people are more often sick,
and sick for longer periods of time, and less able to afford treatment than the better
off. So "they just sleep and groan (Malawi)." Women are taking on increasing
burdens in expanded roles outside the household, and "time poverty" is driving
many women to deeper and deeper exhaustion. When a poor woman in Zambia was asked her
dream, she simply said, " to have time to go into town and play [spend time] with my
friends." Illness can plunge a household into destitution. Anguish and grief over
watching loved ones die because of lack of money for health care is a silent crisis of
poverty.
Security is knowing what tomorrow will bring and how we will get food tomorrow. Bulgaria.
There is no control over anything, at any hour a gun could go off, especially at
night. A poor woman in Brazil.
Many people described security as peace of mind or confidence in survival. Survival
referred not just to livelihood, but also to sheer physical survival in the face of rising
corruption, crime, violence, lack of protection from the police and absence of recourse to
justice, wars between ethnic groups, tribes and clans, frequent natural disasters, and the
uncertainties of season and climate. Lawfulness and access to justice were widely seen as
crucial aspects of wellbeing. In the Kyrgyz Republic people said, "among all the
wellbeing criteria, peace is the most important." In Russia, it was "the absence
of constant fear." In Ethiopia, women said "we live hour to hour" worrying
if it will rain.
The bad life is deeply embedded in insecurity and feeling vulnerable. Insecurity is
related to the external world, to the individual and family -- exposure to shocks, stress,
and risks that increase unpredictability and instability. In many countries, women spoke
about widespread domestic violence, although there is evidence it may have peaked and be
in decline in some countries. Insecurity is also the experience of worry and fear. Even
where poverty has declined, the majority of poor people said that life had become more
unstable and uncertain, particularly as a result of increased crime, violence and
corruption.
Next: Freedom of Choice and Action |
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