A re-look at poverty

Debate on healthcare:

Renton de Alwis

In the USA, a big debate is on healthcare reforms. President Obama's attempt at breaking the hold that health insurance companies have on the facilitation of healthcare at present, is resisted by those with vested interests.

According to those who support the reform initiative, a vast amount of money is siphoned off by middle-agent insurance companies, often leading to the denial of access to good healthcare for the needy, at affordable cost. What is proposed is an alternative direct link between the patient and the healthcare providers i.e. the hospitals and practitioners, where there is a choice for the patient between purchase of insurance and/or going direct to a doctor or a medical facility, much like we have in Sri Lanka. When referring to the current US medical facilities an often heard statement is 'You are dead-meat in the US, if you do not have good medical insurance'. The debate has also focused on the often ignored issue of poverty and its correlation to access to healthcare.

Out of the back-burner

While the focus is on the poor living in developing countries, poverty in the US is a subject and an issue that has been set in the back-burners of most socio-political discussions. It is an 'inconvenient truth' that disturbs the collective social psyche and has been mostly limited to academic discussion, except in the recent past. Poverty is described as the condition of lacking in access to basic human needs such as nutrition, clean water, healthcare, clothing and shelter, because of the inability to afford them.

Education irrespective of where one gets it is vital for human development. File photo

'Absolute poverty' or destitution is defined as those that are below the poverty line with income levels of less than US $ 10 a day. For developing countries, the definition of the poverty line is set at US $ two a day by the World Bank. According to the US Census Bureau, 35.9 million people live below the poverty line in America, including 12.9 million children. The dichotomy is that there is also a huge abundance of food resources in the country.

Food waste

According to the US Agriculture Department (USDA), up to one-fifth of America's food goes to waste. An estimated 130 pounds of food per person ends up as landfill and the annual value of this lost food is estimated to be around US $31 billion.

It is estimated that with the annual waste of food of up to 100 billion pounds, 49 million of the world's poorest of the poor could have been fed. Realizing the need to rationalize food consumption the USDA, for the first time in the agency's history, it will conduct a five-year analysis the National Household Food Purchase and Acquisition Study (NHFPAS) to document the food choices and expenditures made by families in the U.S. The study is expected to provide the first hard-data on household purchases of food and what factors are involved in making food choices. The results are to be used by USDA's Food and Nutrition Services division to make federal food aid programs more effective and to conduct widespread communication campaigns geared to curb wastage.

It is hoped that this study in its aftermath will also assist in convincing the US households on the need to re-adjust and rationalize current levels of consumption, whereby a solid and real impact can be made by the US on mitigating causes of global warming in at least, the post-Copenhagen era.

Poverty of spirit

In a social mobilization workshop-based study, Dr. Phil Bartle has defined poverty as a social problem and a "deeply embedded wound that permeates every dimension of culture and society, as a result of sustained low levels of income for members of a community".

He claims that it includes key factors such as ignorance, disease, apathy, dishonesty and dependency, resulting in lack of access to services like education, markets, healthcare, information, technology, decision-making ability, and lack of communal facilities like water, sanitation, roads, transportation, and communications. He further elaborates that "it is a "poverty of spirit," that allows members of that community to believe in and share despair, hopelessness, apathy and timidity" and concludes that "Poverty, especially the factors that contribute to it, is a social problem, and its solution is also social".

Human development

The Human Development Report and the Human Development Index (HDI) published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) since 1990, look beyond income measures to a broader definition of well-being. The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and gross enrolment in education) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity (PPP) income). Sri Lanka ranked 102 among 182 countries in the HDI index of 2009. The HDI is not by any measure a comprehensive indicator in that it does not capture gender and income inequalities and human and political freedom indicators.

Strong vision for change

The solution to the social problem of poverty; be it in the USA, Sri Lanka or any other country, is not only a social solution in removing the factors of poverty. It is also a political and policy direction driven by a strong long-term vision. That indeed rests squarely on strong and unwavering political leadership and a will to drive a process of change that can cut through vested interests and dominant belief systems that often rely on self-centred greed driven agenda.