15.OctIs poverty really a choice?
From time to time, whether in online forums or dinners with friends, some people share their opinion that poverty is a choice. You might be familiar with the following statements:
“The attitude of the poor is that they want the best things in life for free, because they are poor.”
“Kapag mahirap ka, tamad ka.”
“Hindi mo kasalanan ipanganak ng mahirap, ang kasalanan mo ay kung mamatay kang mahirap”
But is poverty really a choice?
Personally, I believe that being broke is a choice. But poverty is not.
What’s the difference?
Being broke means finding yourself incapable to support your lifestyle, despite the fact that you have the education, resources, and know-how to pull yourself out of that situation.
Poverty, on the other hand, is the inability to provide yourself and/or your family of your basic needs because you are deprived of access to the education, resources, and opportunities that will allow you to rise above it. Even them, the system works against you in such a way that it will take so much work and even more luck to get out of poverty.
Being broke is a personal problem. Poverty is a societal problem. Some examples:
Broke: The woman who finished college, gets paid P30,000 yet for some reason can’t pay her bills on time and doesn’t have enough savings for emergencies.
Poor: The farmer who has worked for decades but still earns only P25 per day. He can’t demand more money or benefits because the last time he did that, he was threatened by the landowner’s private army. He can’t afford to leave because he only makes enough to feed his family once a day.
Broke: The young couple who can’t afford to rent their own home because they spent too much money on their wedding, the reception, and their honeymoon.
Poor: The child who is roaming the streets as a beggar because her parents don’t believe that it’s worth it to put girls through school.
In other words, poverty involves outside factors that most people have no or very little control of. Even if they do have some way to control or circumvent these factors, they aren’t empowered enough to know about it.
And who can blame them about their lack of empowerment? Society at large and the government treats poor people as if cash subsidies and dole outs are the only way out. Because of their desperation, they prefer to eat now rather than look at long term solutions - and because of the lack of education and resources available to them, how will they know about these long term solutions?
Politicians themselves shy away from long term solutions because they take more work and the effects will only be seen years after they have left their position in government. Eh di mamigay na lang ng 500 pesos sa mga tao ngayon, kasi mas maaalala ka nila, at mas iboboto ka nila. Never mind that the 500 is fleeting and unsustainable.
The poverty problem itself is almost cyclical. Fundamental human needs such as food and water must first be met before you can expect someone to be self-actualized. In other words, what use is education if the people are hungry? What’s the use of opportunity? Then again, how do you fill your stomach if you don’t have employment opportunities that will allow you to do so?
To get rid of poverty, widespread changes in policy and society need to take place. To get rid of being broke, one just has to maximize all the available opportunities at hand.
How about you? Do you think poverty is a choice? Is it a state that could easily be avoided?
Note to Readers: Today is Blog Action Day, and FrugalPinoy is participating. Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. This year’s theme is “Poverty”.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Financial Tips, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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I truly agree to this. There are a lot of people who truly do their best but still can’t seem to get their break.
Very well-said! This reminds me of a column entry by Conrado De Quiros in PDI, which I read like a decade ago but stuck to my mind: he said that the poor are poor because they have fewer choices, or none at all. It’s not because they choose to be poor–that’s an absurd notion because no sane person wants to be poor, miserable and starving–it’s because what’s available to them are way limited, even in the most mundane matters.
If you’re rich, you have all sorts of choices (Paris or Italy this summer? That avant-garde painting, or this ancient vase? Buy this company, or that one?…) You don’t even have to demand it, others make it available for you.
As you go further down the socioeconomic ladder, your choices downgrade until there’s none. Middle class: (A house and lot, or a new car? Insurance, or mutual funds? Pizza, or burger?) Poverty line: (Who among my 5 kids do I send to school? Where will I get tomorrow’s fare to work? …)
Poverty is the unavailability of real, humane choices. A country is poor if it can’t provide the majority of its citizens the freedom to choose in even the most basic situations.
But then many poor people rise above their circumstances despite the lack of help from the government or society. Rather than wallow in I’m-a-victim self-pity, they accept the fact they’re poor and work their way up to poke holes on the poverty blanketing them and crawl out. Sadly, too many poor people also think the world owes them something, but do not work hard. Scarcity is a fact of life; anyone who wants a share in the resources, however (depressingly) inequitable the distribution, must engage in some labor.
I believe a government should work hard to empower its people, but the people must also realize to empower themselves first and foremost. Sometimes, we have to create our own choices, an alternative reality for ourselves. Choice starts with the mind; if we think we have no other choice, then we’d resign ourselves to that kind of bleak, choice-less reality.
Hindi mo kasalanan ipanganak ng mahirap, ang kasalanan mo ay kung mamatay kang mahirap…kasi kung tumanda ka’t sinabi mong wala kang magagawa at wala ka ngang ginawa, e desisyon mo yun.
I have a story about my dad. They lived in laguna (near the paete area). No permanent home. They just setup a shank or something to live on near the edge of the mountain. And they kept on moving around. His parents doesn’t care if he goes to school or not. He has no money for “baon” so what did he do? He gets the coconuts that fell from its trees and sell it. In the morning, he sells “pandesal”, newspapers, candies, what have you. He washes his own uniforms. He wears slippers and walk to school. He did it until he gets to high school. Then college came. He went to FEATI on a scholarship grant. It was not easy. He really did his best to get that scholarship. Part-time he works as a janitor. Money he earns from being a janitor pays for daily food and other school needs that the scholarship can’t provide. Through perseverance and knowing that he didn’t want to stay poor all his life helped him in finishing college. His perseverance and “need” to have a better standing in life. He did not stop when there is a problem or a blockage in his life path. He either fix it or work around it. And he realized that waiting for an opportunity will not get him nowhere. So what did he do? He created an opportunity. He believes in himself that he was able to showcase his skill to become a supervisor in the same company he works for as a janitor. He is now retired. Living in the house he was able to buy. In a pension that he was able to prepare. All of us, his children, finished college and is now married. He now enjoys his grandchild.
He was poor. But he made a choice in the past not to stay that way. So he disciplined himself, created opportunities, believed in hard work, and most of all never wavered in his life goals. Now he is not poor. Nor is he so rich. But comfortable enough that he is not worried about his status in life until he dies.
So is poverty a choice? I think poverty is hard but one has a CHOICE to change his status in life. You don’t need to be so rich to say that your life is better. But you need to realize that you need to move, take action, and control your life to have a better life. You work hard to have a better life and still it’s not better. So you give-up. And decides not to do anything. But why waver? One must really make a choice to have a different if not better life. And the constant discipline and determination to follow-through on the choice. There is no shortcut way to having a better life that lasts. And there are times that opportunities does not ever come your way. But why wait? Why don’t you create it for yourself. Why do you always expect others to give it to you? It’s like you’re always thinking that you’re an employee and will never be a boss. Why won’t you be a boss? Why won’t you have your own small business that can grow big in the future? Why is it not possible? IT IS POSSIBLE, but you first need to make the decision/choice to be a business owner first and the determination to follow-through on your decision.
But I’m thinking NOT EVERYBODY THINKS THAT WAY. There are poor people who is not inspired by success-stories of other poor people. That they are used to having the same kind of life because their parents told them that “IYAN TALAGA ANG BUHAY NATIN EH”. So they don’t send their children to school. These children doesn’t learn that they can choose to have a better life. That they can do something about. That one has a choice to control his/her life. For these kind of people, it is a SOCIETAL PROBLEM.
My husband told me that there should be a law saying that “ALL children must go to school”. So they learn and be able to think outside the box. And I agree. When it is illegal for children not to go to school then the awareness of all the possibility of a better or different life will be present in every children. There are free public schools. My mom is one of the public school teachers in Makati. I am a proud product of a public school from elementary to college. And yet I turned out well.
Thanks everyone for commenting! It’s good to get a discussion started on this topic.
My father and my paternal grandfather also came from poor families, so I, too know about the possibility that some people who are born poor find a way to get out of their situation.
In the article, I made a distinction between being “poor” and being “broke”. The father who spends most of his wages on beer and cigarettes instead of his family’s meals for the day is broke.
But the person who, despite his best efforts to get out of poverty, really can’t get a break, then that person is poor.
It’s incredibly hard and unfair to make sweeping generalizations that all poor people have a way out of their situation. That really just isn’t the case. There are many stories I hear where I know I won’t be able to do any better if I were in the person’s position - and this is coming from me, and I know how resourceful I am. I mean, I started my own business when I was 21!
I think I’ll only believe that poverty is a choice when I see that the government has done everything to give the basic services and education to its people. And again, I don’t mean short term cash dole outs either, because these send the wrong message to poor people, and this solution isn’t sustainable as well.
Despite the existence of free public schools, there are many cases where people can’t avail of it regularly because they are in an area with armed warfare, the school is too far and no public transportation is available, etc.
We just don’t know about these things because they aren’t reported in mainstream media. You have to go to these places to see for yourself.
True, people can be self-sufficient, but there are things we need to rely on others for, such as education, medical services, family planning advice, as well as knowledge of the law and our rights. Many underpaid laborers, especially in the rural areas, are unaware of their rights so they allow maltreatment, no benefits, and low wages to be imposed upon them, even if their landowners are the ones at fault. How do you find out about the law and your rights, anyway? Where do the poor go if they have legal questions? What happens when the system fails them and the people who are supposed to provide these services, whether it’s the government or the police, are corrupt or incompetent? It seems like it’s the media who is providing some of these basic services more efficiently (even then, it’s limited) and not the government.
There are many stories about poverty, some successful, while some are downright depressing. Until we makes ourselves hear these stories, until we seek them out, we cannot make generalizations about how being poor is just a state of mind you have to overcome.
Celine, you are right about the points you raised. There are indeed sectors of society that are so downtrodden, so underprivileged, so victimized that it requires intervention of a much larger entity, such as the state. In the absence of an effective government, it’s the NGOs and other private groups that take over the role.
Poverty is a vicious cycle that feeds on ignorance, hopelessness, and lack of opportunities (given or self-made). That’s why education is very important - to raise people’s awareness, and lead them towards self-empowerment. This is what is meant by poverty being a state of mind. Material poverty is awful, but mental and spiritual poverty are a lot worse.
This brings us to a chicken-or-egg question: which comes first? The usual answer is that the government should provide universal access to proper education to empower citizens and lift them out of poverty. That’s a valid answer: education should be a priority of the government, far, far more important than pork barrel allocations. But the solution to poverty is not a simple, linear approach.
The reverse view: without an enlightened citizenry, how can we get a better government?
A common mistake is to refer to the government as a monolithic, distinct entity from us - the hated “other” detached from us. But what is the government? It’s not just the much-hated president, senators, lawmakers and enforcers and those whom we voted to power. The government is also, collectively, people that we may know or be related to us who are public servants or even elected officials - a friend, a teacher, a former classmate, a kababayan, or a relative (maybe even ourselves if we serve in the gov’t). The corrupt mayor is a friend’s uncle, the controversial senator is a classmate’s dad and your kababayan (like in my case). These people share our cultural traits, our roots, our biases, our strengths and weaknesses - and our personal associations with them complicate matters.
As it’s often said, we get the government we deserve. Our government is a reflection of what we are as a people. As a nation, we’re fractured into regions and cultural groups. It’s a long history of dysfunction in government that needs generations and a lot of multilateral cooperation to correct. No single president or a group of citizens can undo this.
This is not to defend the gov’t, or anyone at all. We can’t simply blame one group or the other. We all have a hand in it.
So when we say people should pick themselves up, it doesn’t mean we abandon those in dire need, leaving them mired in problems they have little power to solve (like war). We mean that those who can, should do their best to become part of the solution.
Many of the people who rise above their circumstances try to pay it forward by joining NGOs and doing philanthropy. I also come from poverty, I know what poverty is (my family lived in slums when I was a kid, there were lots of times I’d eat rice w/ only bagoong or salt as ulam, and I had to work while in school)…and I’ve been working to help myself so I’d be in a better position to help others.
Great thought-provoking article, Celine. (My comment is already too long, I think I’ll just continue my musings in my blog.)
Nice article. Thanks.
Eugene
@ Dyoonet:
A common mistake is to refer to the government as a monolithic, distinct entity from us - the hated “other” detached from us. But what is the government? It’s not just the much-hated president, senators, lawmakers and enforcers and those whom we voted to power
I agree. In addition, the government also includes the processes and laws involved in serving the country and its people. I also agree that we do get the government we deserved - whether we admit it or not. Problems in government won’t necessarily be solved by simple changes, ex. replacement of who’s in office, creating new laws, etc. These problems are merely symptoms of much deeper things that may take decades, or even centuries to undo, as there are so embedded in our cultural and political psyche.
Sorry kung late yung reply ko. No internet this weekend
Poverty is a situation. It’s when you cannot gather resources to meet your daily NEEDS. But why can’t you meet your daily needs? Is it because the government cannot provide you with basic needs? Or you cannot access to government’s programs to address your needs? Is it because you believe you cannot get out of that situation, but you still hope someday you can? Or is it because you already tried anything but to no avail? Which should come first? Government’s help or own initiative?