(A book review of The Crisis Caravan and Poor Economics)
Morgan Michael Bailey
For those looking for a fresh perspective on the true nature of poverty and the impacts of humanitarianism, Linda Polman’s The Crisis Caravan and Abhijit Banderjee’s and Esther Duflo’s Poor Economics offer fascinating perspectives.
The Crisis Caravan, a well-crafted criticism of international aid by journalist Linda Polman, highlights the growing yet spastic momentum of the international community to take on humanitarian crises. The book quickly gained my interest as Polman dove into a compelling critique of the uncoordinated and under-evaluated machine of international development. Playing upon the contrasting philosophies of two pioneers of humanitarianism, Henri Dunant and Florence Nightingale, Polman weighs the moral obligations embedded in humanitarianism as framed by Dunant against Nightingale’s criticism that non-governmental aid can be complicit in perpetuating war and conflict.
Using the humanitarian crises in Goma and Sudan as key examples, the book frames a reality in which the development sector becomes a pawn to militant and government forces alike. Polman exposes the intense competition among international aid organizations and the unethical actions taken to gain global recognition and donor support, implicating these groups in perpetuating a failed development sector, subject to extortion and dependence among its recipients.
This argument is deepened with her controversial criticism of the Hollywood-like treatment of Sierra Leone’s amputees, who, she states, find life more profitable as limbless poster children for international development groups than prosthetic supported reintegrated citizens. Polman closes her critique by highlighting the need for greater support in increasing communication, cohesiveness, and accountability in the international development sector.
Away from the machinery and politics that deliver and dictate aid, Abhijit Banderjee’s and Esther Duflo’s Poor Economics provides an academic account of how the world’s poorest people make decisions. Banderjee and Duflo situate their book in the midst of the contrasting views of Jeffery Sachs and William Easterly, to examine if the world’s most impoverished are caught in what they refer to as the “poverty trap”. Using evidence from academic studies and rigorous randomized control trials of development interventions, the authors examine the contrasting theories that the world’s poorest people will remain so without an infusion of resources and cash, as Sachs argues, or that they are, in fact, capable of devising their own solutions in the absence of assistance, as Easterly maintains.
Though the density of information can be overwhelming, Poor Economics presents a myriad of interesting findings into the rationality of extremely economically disadvantaged people, without presupposing that the reader has a background or even a significant interest in economics. Though often laden with numbers summarizing the economic cost and benefits of people’s decisions, the authors also provide anecdotal accounts of individuals and families, giving the statistics personal depth.
A particularly interesting point was their illuminating discussion on the state of hunger among marginalized communities. The authors recount findings of how food subsidies aimed at increasing caloric intake in fact had the opposite effect in several studies, as consumers used their “extra” income to purchase tastier (albeit less nutritious) food. Similar occurrences were detailed where calorie deficient groups were often likely to spend excess money on televisions, radios, dowries, funerals or festivals before meeting their own nutritional needs. The authors suggest people often choose to make poverty more livable rather than making financial investments in education, health, or business, viewed more for their immediate cost and monetary risk, than stepping-stones to financial security.
Using such examples, Poor Economics illustrates the limitations of development strategies that fail to take into account that human decision making is often extremely complex and counter intuitive. In total, the cumulative findings presented in Poor Economics hint at a piecemeal path to a world without poverty, with no singular grandiose solution. Forgoing sweeping conclusions, the authors highlight five key lessons that encompass the breadth of their findings. (1) People who are poor often lack pieces of information critical to their well-being. (2) They often have far more responsibility for their own well being than the wealthy, going through arduous processes to acquire the most basic of human services. (3) The market for common services such as banking and health insurance is undeveloped or unfavorable for most poor communities. (4) Poor countries with a tumultuous history are not on a set course for failure, as the failure of these countries to provide for their citizens often resides far less with the economic plutocracy of the political elite but instead with avoidable flaws in the design of policies. (5) Lastly, the authors refashion the argument that low expectations of people, including politicians as well as the poor, women, etc,. often tend to become self-fulfilling prophesies.
The Crisis Caravan and Poor Economics provide insights into the macro and micro layers of international development that connect governments, donors, development agencies, aid workers, and aid recipients. The reality of these layers, as the authors present them, are full of complexities, each caught between moral and ideological philosophies deeply rooted in the humanitarian cause. The subtle nuances entailed in efficacious poverty reduction programs as described by Poor Economics require a well-targeted dynamic development sector with a significant degree of precision and resilience. Such prerequisites, however, are clearly absent in the inharmonious and uncontrolled machine of the development industry as presented in The Crisis Caravan. In short, for anyone looking to dive into the controversial and timely subject matter of the true impact of international development these two books are worth the read.
Morgan Michael Bailey is a recent University of California, Irvine Engineering PhD graduate and is currently completing a Masters in Public Health at UC Irvine.