Short sighted spending decisions

The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof writes a fascinating opinion piece on a "politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous" truth of global poverty, "It's that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children's prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households." What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below...


Op-Ed Columnist
Moonshine or the Kids?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 22, 2010


Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times

Jude Kokolo has been stuck in first grade for the last five years because his father says he can’t afford to pay $2.50 a month in school fees. But his father says that he averages $2 a day on alcohol and cigarettes.

There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous:

It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.

That probably sounds sanctimonious, haughty and callous, but it’s been on my mind while traveling through central Africa with a college student on my annual win-a-trip journey. Here in this Congolese village of Mont-Belo, we met a bright fourth grader, Jovali Obamza, who is about to be expelled from school because his family is three months behind in paying fees. (In theory, public school is free in the Congo Republic. In fact, every single school we visited charges fees.)

We asked to see Jovali’s parents. The dad, Georges Obamza, who weaves straw stools that he sells for $1 each, is unmistakably very poor. He said that the family is eight months behind on its $6-a-month rent and is in danger of being evicted, with nowhere to go.

The Obamzas have no mosquito net, even though they have already lost two of their eight children to malaria. They say they just can’t afford the $6 cost of a net. Nor can they afford the $2.50-a-month tuition for each of their three school-age kids.

“It’s hard to get the money to send the kids to school,” Mr. Obamza explained, a bit embarrassed.

But Mr. Obamza and his wife, Valerie, do have cellphones and say they spend a combined $10 a month on call time.

In addition, Mr. Obamza goes drinking several times a week at a village bar, spending about $1 an evening on moonshine. By his calculation, that adds up to about $12 a month — almost as much as the family rent and school fees combined.

I asked Mr. Obamza why he prioritizes alcohol over educating his kids. He looked pained.

Other villagers said that Mr. Obamza drinks less than the average man in the village (women drink far less). Many other men drink every evening, they said, and also spend money on cigarettes.

“If possible, I drink every day,” Fulbert Mfouna, a 43-year-old whose children have also had to drop out or repeat grades for lack of school fees, said forthrightly. His eldest son, Jude, is still in first grade after repeating for five years because of nonpayment of fees. Meanwhile, Mr. Mfouna acknowledged spending $2 a day on alcohol and cigarettes.

Traditionally, a young man here might have paid his wife’s family a “bride price” of a pair of goats. Now the “bride price” starts with oversized jugs of wine and two bottles of whiskey.

Two M.I.T. economists, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, found that the world’s poor typically spend about 2 percent of their income educating their children, and often larger percentages on alcohol and tobacco: 4 percent in rural Papua New Guinea, 6 percent in Indonesia, 8 percent in Mexico. The indigent also spend significant sums on soft drinks, prostitution and extravagant festivals.

Look, I don’t want to be an unctuous party-pooper. But I’ve seen too many children dying of malaria for want of a bed net that the father tells me is unaffordable, even as he spends larger sums on liquor. If we want Mr. Obamza’s children to get an education and sleep under a bed net — well, the simplest option is for their dad to spend fewer evenings in the bar.

Because there’s mounting evidence that mothers are more likely than fathers to spend money educating their kids, one solution is to give women more control over purse strings and more legal title to assets. Some aid groups and U.N. agencies are working on that.

Another approach is microsavings, helping poor people save money when banks aren’t interested in them. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most powerful part of microfinance isn’t microlending but microsavings.

Microsavings programs, organized by CARE and other organizations, work to turn a consumption culture into a savings culture. The programs often keep household savings in the women’s names, to give mothers more say in spending decisions, and I’ve seen them work in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Well-meaning humanitarians sometimes burnish suffering to make it seem more virtuous and noble than it often is. If we’re going to make more progress, and get kids like the Obamza children in school and under bed nets, we need to look unflinchingly at uncomfortable truths — and then try to redirect the family money now spent on wine and prostitution.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos videos and follow me on Twitter.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on May 23, 2010, on page WK9 of the New York edition.

Reactions

Dequi says:

what a crock!! apparently most of you have never been in the class of the working poor. one can make all the good decisions in the world, but income only goes so far. the rich make just as many bad decisions as the poor, but their’s don’t show because, comparatively, they have more than enough to go around several times. who needs a dozen cars, several houses and just have to have others clean their homes and raise their children.

by the way: the rich drink wine, smoke and buy prostitutes. the only difference is they have to pay more for all of the above! if you want to blame the poor for the ills of society, lets remember it was the greed of the rich that almost destroyed our entire banking system. people are people-rich or poor. no one class is better than the other!!

Salvador says:

Kristof’s article is a very good sample of prejudism against the poor. It only shows his total lack of gray matter. It’s easy to judge others when you don’t know how the poor live. Remember the native american saying “never judge a man until you have walked in his moccasins”.

OK says:

I’m working in Africa for the past 20 years and observed that the more children the family has the less attention is given to them. Education, new clothing even feeding and medical attention is usually more available for first 2 children and the last- born (”the pet of the family”). Most families have not less than 4-6 children and the middle ones are the ones suffering most. Hardly you see them in new clothes or shoes (only in church/mosque), they usually attend public schools while their lucky siblings could be in private ones, events like sport competitions or birthday parties are often not for them and so on… Many are going astray, but who’s fault is that?
Parents are mostly concerned with procreation because they believe the more children they have the more chances that at least one of them will make it in life and help parents at old age. So its kind of selfish insurance for the future. By what means they will make it is nobody’s concern. Many are even expecting that some of their children will die. But if they will give more attention to fewer children all of them will survive and make it in life.
And another thing. Many do not want to do “family planing”. Men believe that to use condom during sex is like “to suck sweet without removing the wrapper”. Again, its a selfish thing. They just want to enjoy their own life. “And let the white man worry about the future” as one of our workers put it.

Anna says:

In many cases,indeed, poor people rather spend money on alcohol, and other bad choices for various reasons:1) it’s generational; 2) immediate satisfaction, 3) different values. However, impossible to ignore that economy plays major fact in poor families education. At the same time, here in the United States there is so much help to the poor families: grants and scholarships. Yet, they still tend to practice poor choices. All of us need literacy in using money properly. But this is just fantasy: so many distractions and advertisements of “easy and sweet” life.