What Does It Mean To Starve?
Back in February, I removed a reader comment from an article called "The Children Are Starving."
The article's title was (deliberately) hyperbolic. I was making a point about food insecurity in the US and the absurdity inherent in the fact that a country which issues the world's reserve currency scores relatively poorly on childhood poverty (figure below).
The US is sandwiched (no pun intended) between Mexico and Chile on an OECD score and sits miles above that metric's average.
Of course,
“There are no longer natural famines in the world; there are only political famines,” Harari said. “If people in Syria, Sudan or Somalia starve to death, it is because some politician wants them to.”
There’s a lesson in there for America’s politicians, many of whom refuse to support initiatives aimed at alleviating childhood poverty and malnutrition in the US.
Thank you for these last 2 paragraphs they speak volumes in tandem. It does state the obvious but only lacks one nuance. Religion.
The Swedish statistician, Hans Rosling, in his book, “Factfulness”, looks at the world by categorizing the countries in the world into 4 categories: Level 1 (income under $2/day/per person), Level 2 (income $2-$8/day), Level 3 (income $8-$32/day) and Level 4 ($32+/day).
In his model he reviews living conditions (birth rate, food, energy, education, transportation, health, etc.) among the various levels and describes what their life looks like an these various levels.
He presents this model as a more useful framework than dividing global population into “developed” vs, “developing” world because although the majority of countries fall into Level 2 or Level 3- and so starvation is a declining issue- the reader can better understand the world in which we live, especially regarding starvation and other living conditions (eg.- using electricity vs. wood to cook food and low birthrate vs. higher birth rate) and better understand the problems in Level 1-2 countries and how to raise living standards (more education and providing opportunities for people to have a little business).
Just because children are no longer starving does not mean we do not have to “help” poorer countries anymore.
We worry about income disparity in the US- but we should also be looking at income disparity between Level 4 countries (US) and the rest of the world.
My understanding is that disparity across countries is sinking, as countries/politicians abandon Soviet-inspired policies and move towards a bit more capitalism (however crony or kleptocratic. Not that their socialist systems weren’t also corrupt/kleptocratic anyway).
Let’s not fall in love with Rosling’s numbers too fast. Level 4 is an income that starts under $12,000 a year. Try to get a realistic budget in the US for that income level. I doubt most people would want to live in, or even visit, the places where that can be done. The per capita GDP in the US is $175/day and we still don’t get millions of our kids fed properly. Remember, for many people obesity is generally not so much a function of overeatring as much as it is the result of eating wrong. The cheapest foods, the ones the poor can afford, are often the most fattening and least nutritious. Poverty mostly hides in this country. More than 90% of the school kids in my home county’s largest and seat city (pop 150k) qualify for the full government “lunch” program (you know the one famous for ketchup being classified as a vegetable). Time to stop trying to create excuses for this problem by blaming someone else for it. The kids aren’t starving because they are lazy or just unlucky. Come on, man!
Between 1960 and 2010 (just 2 generations) Syria’s population increased 4.5 times. Growth in industrial manufacturing and crop production lag far behind population growth. This certainly increases the probability of famine when weather suddenly becomes less favorable.
The US does not have such a problem. May be, when population reaches 1 billion… but I don’t expect this will happen soon.
But. but. but. To drive down child poverty, you presumably have to lift their parents out of it too? And how can we do that, when adult poverty/wealth is one’s just desert for one’s laziness/striving?
I mean, I’m joking. I’m not as extreme as Sam Harris but I think luck (genes, environment etc) plays such an outsized role in one’s disposition and place in the social pyramid it makes sense to keep said pyramid very flat indeed.
But not totally. Even if grit and striving are genetic dispositions just like IQ or EQ, it seems to me worthwhile to reward effort/ingenuity, to some degree. Just in case external motivations turn out to be an important factor…
At last we have another full V-shaped recovery to go along with the equity indices — childhood poverty! Not even Trump thought such a thing would ever be possible.