The Poverty of Choice

Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef, recently got himself in a bit of a pickle by proclaiming to be confused by his observation that while the typical British working class family claimed to be unable to afford the incorporation of healthy, nutritious food into its diet, it nevertheless could afford to own a large LCD television set or two. Predictably, Jamie's comment engendered a maelstrom of criticism among numerous observers. I, however, could not help but feel slightly guilty at Jamie's predicament. I remembered numerous past instances where I had thought similar thoughts of my lesser-privileged compatriots. Like that time when I discovered that the poor in India (and other countries) spend a substantial portion of their meagre income on tobacco and alcohol. And that other time, when Lakshmi, our domestic help, told us how she had splurged on a beautiful and expensive-looking sari for Diwali.

Maybe you have had similar thoughts too. Some of these are common enough observations and have even been immortalised on the silver screen. You may remember the heavily indebted farmer who decides to borrow money from the usurious moneylender and risks losing his do bigha zamin (two acres of land). Or perhaps you may remember the urban poor hero[in]es who hatch hare-brained, sloppy, get-rich schemes that land them in tight scrapes (Hera Pheri and Delhi Belly, for example)?

But why do poor families spend on alcohol and tobacco instead of on better nutrition for their children? Or splurge on expensive non-essentials instead of saving for future exigencies? Economists have long sought to answer this question; to address why the poor tend to behave in ways that promote the reinforcement of the poverty that traps them.

Is this behaviour unique to the poor alone?

We, in the middle class, have likely faced financial adversity in our lives at some point or the other. We may even have battled through periods when our mental faculties became overwhelmed by a temporary "in-between-jobs situation”, an expensive medical emergency or a catastrophic closure of that popular "chit fund" company.

But the level to which financial stress affects our brain only recently became clear. US economists discovered that thinking about money issues makes people focus intensely on immediate problems while neglecting others, particularly those in the seemingly distant future. In another experiment, over a 100 random shoppers in a New Jersey mall were asked to imagine themselves in various situations of financial adversity including expensive car repairs and large salary cuts at work. They were subsequently tested on their puzzle-solving abilities. Surprisingly, people placed under high amounts of (even entirely fake) financial stresses performed badly on standard tests of cognitive ability.

Our cognitive ability directly affects our ability to make decisions in our daily life. From our choice of work clothes to the type of lunch we pick up at the cafeteria. From the colour of the curtains for the bedroom to choosing between Sony TV or Sun TV to watch at home. What may be surprising is that each of these decisions comes at a price. A physical price we pay in mental energy.

As it turns out, we may only have a finite store of mental energy or willpower. A recent New York Times article describes how after a long day of making decisions or resisting temptations, “decision fatigue” sets in. We then either make decisions impulsively without thinking through the consequences or avoiding making decisions altogether (remember those irresistible impulse buys of chocolates or chips at the supermarket on your way back from work?). But, just as physical energy can be topped up with a quick shot of glucose, so can our mental stores. A 4PM snack at work could have prevented you from giving into temptation at the supermarket counter.

Now, for a moment, think of that woman working 12 hours in the fields of India, having eaten barely one full meal in the day. There is a good chance that while she is monotonously but carefully planting our rice, she is thinking about her unpaid debt with the moneylender, about the looming school fees of her children and the sudden price rise of dals in the market. Any fiscal choice she makes has to be constantly weighed against numerous competing choices. If she chooses to go to the doctor to treat her debilitating TB, she’d probably have to forfeit that day’s wages. If she decides to buy the prescribed medicines, she might not have enough money left over to buy food at the market. On those rare days when she does have some money tucked away in her pallu, so many different temptations test her limited willpower. Sometimes it's just easier to give in to the nutritionally useless but oh-so-tasty packet of chips than to get some extra dal.

I shudder to imagine having to live life like that. When expenses that wouldn't even register as a tiny blip on our middle-class budget radars can literally have life-or-death consequences. Our relative affluence insulates us to many of the really hard and mentally exhausting choices faced by a third of the world’s population today. But for those times when our choices can and do get hard, we can always eat a KitKat and soldier on.

There is a common perception that the poor remain mired in poverty because of their own bad life choices. They don’t bother to educate themselves! They don’t save enough for the future! Or even that they are too lazy and don't work hard enough! However, the new research into this major and hitherto ignored factor of their lives, allows us to gain some clarity into the daily mental struggles of the poor.

In this fast-paced, dichotomous world of extreme poverty and myriad choices, it is clear that a poor [wo]man’s life is a very hard life. Poverty weighs heavily on the mind. It blocks out thoughts of all but the most pressing concerns. The financial stress that forces the poor to carefully consider the cost of each and every decision, also takes a significant emotional and energetic toll on them. This in turn affects subsequent decisions and slowly a vicious cycle forms.

Our newfound clarity - it is not an all-explaining clarity by the way; as a friend wryly observed, The complexities of Life cannot be curve fitted into a single economic equation - behooves us, as a society, to empathise with our not-so-privileged brethren. I am reminded of a story about a beggar that my wry friend recounted recently. Routinely ignored by many passers-by, this beggar wearing tattered clothes and lying sprawled on the sidewalk slowly accumulated a few sympathetic coins. One person who stopped by the begging bowl, made to remove a Rs5 note from his wallet. His friend, mildly affronted, cautioned him that the beggar would likely waste that money on cheap liquor. To which he replied, "That is fine. I know Rs5 will not get him any food anyway. Better to buy that liquor and kill his hunger with it."

We need to acknowledge this perverse dichotomy in the lives of the poor and the larger forces that influence the choices that they make. At the very least, we should pause for a moment before rushing to judge the Lakshmis of this world on their spending decisions.

Pavan Vaidyanathan is a biologist, programmer and amateur photographer. Sometimes all at once. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and volunteers with the Association for India's Development (AID). He tweets as @pavanapuresan