So You Think You Can Dance Know What The Poor Wants?

Think again.

Let's say we provide the poor with cash money transfer, what do you think the poor would spend that money for? I bet that many of us would think that the poor would buy more basic staple food, like rice, or perhaps to pay for education fee for their kids, because, rightly so, the poor has low calorie and nutrition intake and low education status.

But suppose we found out that the money is spent for buying more cell-phone card credit, pulsa HP, what would you think?

Some, or perhaps many, of you would get mad and deem this act as unacceptable. The poor must buy more food or basic education, you insist, because it would help them out of poverty.

Let me take different view nonetheless. First, perhaps they're not as starving or badly in need for education as you think. Second, even if they indeed have low calorie intake and education status, in their calculation, ability to communicate with friends and relatives using cell-phone gives them more pleasures and utilities.

And I am OK with this. I believe that the poor knows what they're doing.

As simple as it may seems, you probably could not easily share this view -- you think you know what the poor has to do more than they do. Or even, you think the poor folks don’t know what needs to be done with that additional money.

In this interesting article, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of MIT, with their extensive experience on poverty researches around the world suggests that such oversimplifying and paternalistic view on the poor is probably of little use. So is any well-intended poverty reduction reform based on that standpoint.

Yes, more nutrition and education would eventually lead to better productivity, hence income, and less poverty. But probably the poor has different expectation. There is one paragraph in that article that I would love to quote in full.

…We often see the world of the poor as a land of missed opportunities and wonder why they don't invest in what would really make their lives better. But the poor may well be more skeptical about supposed opportunities and the possibility of any radical change in their lives. They often behave as if they think that any change that is significant enough to be worth sacrificing for will simply take too long. This could explain why they focus on the here and now, on living their lives as pleasantly as possible and celebrating when occasion demands it… (Bold is mine)

Granted, their decision to buy more cell-phone credits, or TV set to watch infotainment, or to carry out lavish traditional and/or religious party is perfectly understandable.

Econ 101 tells you that if you want to maximize the recipient's utilities, you should not set any conditions on your money transfer -- and let them decide to buy whatever gives them higher utilities. But if the objective is to maximize your utility (as the giver), you can impose specific conditions for the recipient to get the money to make sure you get what you want – e.g you demand the poor spend the money to buy rice because it satisfies your belief that more calorie is what the poor needs.

Now a million dollar question would be which one matters more -- your utility or their utility?