By Agbada S. Agbada

Poverty is a scourge that has plagued society since time immemorial. While some were born into poverty, others have been thrust into poverty by social, economic and ecological factors such as wars, drought, disruption in industries with consequent loss of jobs etc. which resulted in significant change in social and personal conditions.

Poverty is like a pit into which once fallen, requires great effort and often external help to climb out of. It is like a gyre spinning with a dreadful and fatal ferocity that drowns those within its grip. In this piece, I discuss the vicious cycle of poverty and the spill overs.

By World Bank definition, those living below $1.90 a day are the extremely poor. The 2015 World Bank data shows that 734 million people live in extreme poverty[1] and five countries: India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Bangladesh by the same 2015 data accounted for half the population of the world’s extreme poor.[2] Nigeria has now overtaken India and is the poverty capital of the world with 86.9 million people in extreme poverty as at 2018.[3] This situation underscores the magnitude of poverty in the country and the consequential devastating effects of the scourge. However, the focus of this article is not necessarily on Nigeria, but on the general nature of the phenomenon, particularly the plight of those caught in its web and the wide systemic effects on society. Of course, the context is local.

Due to the pervasiveness of poverty in our society, we may all be familiar with the concept. But a lot of persons, including policy makers, may only understand poverty as an abstract concept and may not understand how it shapes the lives of people in reality. Particularly, its cyclical and generational effect is often not appreciated. There is a common misconception that the poor is partly to blame for their poverty; that every man is responsible for his own life and the outcome of a person depends on his choices and efforts. In essence, the poor somewhat deserve their poverty and the rich equally deserve their wealth. This argument may have its merits and I do not seek to undermine the importance of choice and individual responsibility in life, but the argument is an oversimplification of the problem. People are not just poor because of the bad choices they make or their inability to take personal responsibility for their lives. Poverty is usually thrust on people by circumstances simply beyond their control. As Jeffery Sachs argued in The Price of Civilization:

“Many people are just unlucky. Market forces such as foreign competition may turn against them … Others are born poor to parents who lack the education and skills to escape from poverty. Still, others have diseases and disability that are no fault of their own. Some live in places hit by earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, floods and other hazards and depend on government to survive and recover.”[4]

The above list of Jeffery Sachs is not exhaustive. Some people live in war and violence torn places and just live in constant fear without opportunities to thrive. Others may have their sources of livelihood destroyed by pandemics like the present Corona Virus pandemic we are experiencing and then plunged into poverty. In all these circumstances, it is simply beyond the choice of the victims.

Poverty sticks like the chameleon’s faeces referenced by Kofi Awoonor in “Songs of Sorrow.”[5] When you clean it, it cannot not go easily. That is the lot of the poor. Children of the poor are likely to be poor and have children who are likely to be poor. And the vicious cycle continues. The reason is not farfetched. Children of the poor either lack access to education or to quality education. This is not just a choice of the parents. Some parents simply do not have the resources to educate their children and that is no fault of the children. Those who attend school live under conditions that do not stimulate learning. Most out of school hours are used in helping the parents in the farm, hawking, or doing other chores and little time is left for studies. For those whose parents are not literate and informed, there is little or no help at home from parents with studies. They also suffer malnutrition and grow up in environments that do not inspire academic excellence and pursuit. They also attend poorly funded schools and lack reading materials and other learning tools.

The formative years of a person, like the foundation of a building, are critical to the outcome of his life. In the words of Jeffery Sachs, “the early childhood years are the foundation for all that follows.”[6] Sachs also argued based on scientific findings that:

“When mothers are healthy and properly nourished during pregnancy, when childbirth is safe and the young child is properly nourished, provided with quality health care, raised in a safe and nurturing environment, and afforded the chance to learn and socialize in preschool, the child is likely to reap lifetime benefits of better health, higher school attainment, and higher labor-market earnings. When, on the other hand, the child is born underweight; raised in a dangerous and stressful environment; subjected to environmental hazards of pollution, noise, and other threats; and precluded by poverty from preschool and quality child care, the consequences can be disastrous, not just in childhood but for decades onward.”[7]

All these impair a child’s ability to compete with his peers exposed to better conditions. And of course, this has a tendency to limit a child’s growth in life. The children are however not to blame for having poor parents, they are just victims of their parents’ poverty. Sadly, the price of having poor parents is a probability to be poor but the world may not understand when these children grow up poor. I am not saying children of the poor always end up poor. I am also not making an excuse for laziness. I am aware that some of the great names we hear of today were from poor homes. And I believe in the statement of J. K. Rowling that “poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.”[8] I make no attempt to befriend poverty however I know that only a few persons succeed in climbing out of poverty by their own efforts and it will be unrealistic and unfair to use the few as the standard of assessment.

Poverty is not an “ennobling experience”, in the words of J. K. Rowling.  It “… entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.”[9] There is inherent indignity in poverty and the letters in our laws guaranteeing dignity of the human person may not make practical meaning to the poor. The Constitutional Court of South Africa echoed this fact when the Court observed in The Government of the Republic of South Africa v. Grootboom that “there can be no doubt that human dignity, freedom and equality, the foundational values of our society, are denied those who have no food, clothing or shelter.”[10]

The poor are highly vulnerable to exploitation. They are also the most susceptible to crime. Girls from poor homes are more likely to be victims of human trafficking, child marriage and prostitution, forced or voluntary, than their peers from affluent homes. And boys from poor homes are more likely to engage in violent crimes than their peers from better homes. The reason is simple. The poor lack the relevant skills, education, capital, and orientation to participate meaningfully in the market economy and to steer their lives to prosperity.

Society often misunderstands the poor and tend to blame them for their predicaments. We discountenance the importance of nurture in human development and narrow prosperity simply to hard work and choice. This leads to an absolute postulation that every person is responsible for his fate and that if the poor simply work hard and are more prudent with their choices, they will escape poverty. This belief entails a sense of impatience with the poor. It also results in unrealistic prescriptions for prosperity. There is a common belief that the vicious cycle of poverty can be broken if the poor gives birth only to the number of children they can cater for. A lawyer I met in Court in 2019 went extreme with the uncharitable and insensitive suggestion that the poor should be banned by government from giving birth.

The poor are also expected to engage in family planning and are blamed for their failure in this respect.  I am an advocate of population control and I agree that people should give birth only to children they can take care of. But we often forget that illiteracy, poverty and over population work together. Countries with the highest poverty levels are still those with the highest population growth rates. The poor usually lack proper information about safe birth control measures. Some simply cannot afford it. But sexual desire and pleasure do not discriminate against the poor. And it will be unfair to say only the rich should have sex. It is the government that can help the poor to have birth control through education and access to safe and effective contraceptives and other birth control measures. The poor cannot do it on their own.

Our expectations of the poor often proceed from our level of exposure, understanding and education. This is inconsistent with the reality and experiences of the poor and they therefore often fall short of our high expectations. And when this happens, we become even more impatient with the poor. The misunderstanding and concomitant neglect of the poor entail grave consequences for society at large. Poverty precipitates crime and restiveness, and other social vices which put us all at risk. We are therefore compelled to spend more on internal and personal security. Though the extra investment in security does not completely inoculate us from the consequences of insecurity and we live with a consciousness and fear of being victims. The millions of out of school children will grow up with the children of the affluent and probably become the next generation of kidnappers, terrorists, armed robbers, and other violent criminals.

The spillovers of poverty are far reaching and affect us all and we must have a collective commitment to addressing the lot of the poor. Blaming the poor, as some persons are wont to do, for the ills of the society and expecting the poor to help themselves out of poverty are unrealistic, wishful and circumlocutious. As Kofi Annan notes in his autobiography noted, “alone, the poor are in too dire a position to help themselves.”[11] They therefore need external help to climb out of poverty. “Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.”[12] With this unique power of imagination, we need to think ourselves into the positions of the poor and express empathy, and help where we can, tom rescue people from shackles of poverty. Ultimately, government needs to invest more in education and increase access because this is the surest means of helping the children of the poor to escape the poverty trap.

[1] Available at https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview. Last accessed on 23 July 2020.

[2] Roy Katayama and Divyanshi Wadhwa, “Half of the World’s Poor Live in Just 5 Countries”, January 9, 2019. Available at https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/half-world-s-poor-live-just-5-countries. Last accessed on 23 July 2020.

[3] Yomi Kazeem, “Nigeria has Become the Poverty Capital of the World”, Quartz Africa, January 25, 2018. Available at https://qz.com/africa/1313380/nigerias-has-the-highest-rate-of-extreme-poverty-globally/. Last accessed on 23 July 2020.

[4]Jeffery Sachs, “The Price of Civilization; Reawakening Virtue and Prosperity After the Economic Fall,” (2012), Vintage, p. 39.

[5] Kofi Awoonor, “Songs of Sorrow.” Available at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57147/songs-of-sorrow. Last accessed on 22 July 2020.

[6] Jeffery Sachs, supra., p. 197.

[7] Ibid.

[8] J. K. Rowling, ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination’, Harvard Commencement Speech, 5 June 2008. Available at https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/. Last accessed on 23 July 2020.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Case CCT 11/00. Available at http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2000/19.pdf. Last accessed on 23 July 2020.

[11] Kofi Annan with Nader Mousavizadeh, “Interventions; A Life in War and Peace”, (2013), Penguin Books, p. 229.

[12] J. K. Rowling, supra.