Improving Societal Resilience

I was listening to the radio the other day, or more accurately I was listening to the podcast of the radio programme, when a startling fact was given. So startling that I had to listen again to make sure that I had heard this correctly, but I had.  There are 100,000 people in the UK receiving regular food aid. Yes, that’s right – in the UK in 2011 there are people being regularly fed by charities.

More startling still is that these figures probably understate the case.  Yet more surprises followed. So where would these people be and who could they be? These must be the down outs seen in most big cities, and the poverty stricken of Glasgow, London and other urban centres, right? Well, no.  One of the largest charities feeding people started in Salisbury.

You may not know Salisbury. Its a small town made famous by a marvellous cathedral who’s spire reaches to the heavens and is marvellously captured by a famous Constable painting.  It is quintessential small town England, more Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple than Trainspotting.  But the people in Salisbury recognised a need and thought much the same, if it can happen here then it must be worse elsewhere and the charity has extended its operations to Banbury (just outside Oxford), Cambridge and other similar towns.

Many of those needing food have simply run out of money, and often through the incompetence of the Government department charged with providing the benefits that should prevent people from going hungry. Payments arrive late, are wrong, are in dispute. Small glitches in the system but terrifically disruptive to those who have fallen on hard times. Like the couple raising two children who both have jobs, only to find that the man was so good at his job they promoted him.  A total disaster, as this meant larger earnings and less benefits so he was £30 per week worse off, just enough to tip them from marginal surplus into deficits.  Food aid keeps them going.

More startling still was the figure from the USA, the richest country in the world. 1 in 7 people in the US depend on food aid in some form.  I think this just confirms my view that the USA is simply a dysfunctional society and no model for anyone.

As it happens, I was also reading “One illness away”, a marvellous book about the nature of poverty.  “The poor are always with us” school of thought could never be more wrong as the book explains how detailed research reveals that who is in poverty is forever changing, those in poverty may gradually climb out through gradually accumulating positive improvements whilst others fall into poverty through a similar accumulation of negative events.

This is such an excellent book that I think it should be compulsory reading for those studying development, economics and societal resilience.  The striking stories of those who were reasonably well off – running their own businesses, owning their own house, land and assets – but through a series of unfortunate events are reduced to poverty.  The illness of the head of the house which reduced earnings and required large outgoings for health care, the subsequent death and funeral costs.  Suddenly assets had been sold, earnings and savings vanished.  Equally striking are those who climb out of poverty.  These are not sudden transformations but gradual, a slight improvement in crops, a marginal job in an urban fringe, an investment in further resources such as animals for milking or meat that pays off. Rarely though do these people climb out of all vulnerability, they remain poor and just as liable to fall into poverty again if those small events turn against them again.

If one thinks of one’s own family history you can see evidence of exactly these stories playing out in the recent history of England.  In our family we have plenty who were in the Workhouse, the Victorian institution for the poor that survived into the 1970s.  Others who did marginally better holding down skilled jobs in the chaos of 19th century London, in my case as basket makers and wood workers. Anyone who has watched “Who do you think you are?” will recognise these stories too, the poor and desperate of Europe making their way to England in search of a better life but often leaving behind relative wealth perhaps lost through religious, political or other circumstances.  For most people, the great events of history toss our families around and we cope as best we can; we do not dictate them.

And so by good fortune I end up in a society with a good educational system which is free, and a health service that is free too.  The latter in particular is one of the key reasons why people fall into poverty, it is the cost of health care that ruins many.

The implications of the book are that we need to understand what is causing the flow of people who are becoming poor and to devise policies to help stem this flow, and to understand what keeps people in poverty once there and to devise policies to enable people to lift themselves out of poverty.

What is also striking is how much we all lose through poverty as talented people struggle to eek out an existence in the hope of something better for them in the future, or more often for their children’s future.  A talented 15 year old with a remarkable gift for Mathematics but whose father could not begin to think how his son might become an engineer.  The paths are available but he, and indeed nobody in his region, had no idea how one would become an engineer and so could not even encourage his son in the right direction.

Whilst macro-economic development certainly helps, it often leaves the poorest untouched through lack of information, and because it does not address the more immediate issues of their lives.  Understanding these and helping the poor to be more resilient can therefore alleviate poverty and ultimately, we will all be the richer for it.