CLEVELAND, Ohio — The BBC film series “Why Poverty?” takes a closer look at “why there are, in 2012, a billion people around the world still living in desperate penury” as described by Guardian writer Lacy Mangan. The documentary “Poor Us” by BBC4 begins by describing a middle class reality and creates an emotional connection and identification with the topic of poverty in an animated history film.
The documentary begins within the dreams of an individual living this middle class reality. During this “dream state” the film delves into the long history of poverty beginning with hunter-gatherer societies.
Hunter-gatherer societies were based largely on labor; if you could hunt, you could live. While this may have been a period in which there was little definable poverty, one characteristic missing from life was security. This highly valued need of the modern world was at this time simply not available. While danger came in many forms for hunter-gatherers, poverty for the most part was not one of these. Early civilization however made the concept of relative poverty a reality.
Early civilizations largely functioned off of agriculture. Society was mostly divided into farmers and royalty and the typical lifespan was 35 years. While kings and chiefs held the majority of wealth farmers were often poor laborers and during this time there were not trade markets or a means to import resources. Cairo was one of the most advanced cities of the time and despite the existence of housing structures a large portion of the population slept outdoors, in tents or in ditches on the side of the road.
As a result of the large population of poor, religion began to make an impact through charity. Charity was viewed as a way of redeeming yourself for your sins. As a result, the first “beggars” emerged. In this same period, Greek plays about poverty were performed while the poor watched on from behind the gates of the coliseums. About 200 years later, around 1,300 A.D., Paris was the largest urban area in Western Europe and poverty was rampant.
Estimates put the population of Paris around 200,000 with about 50 percent of the population being either laboring or non-laboring poor. For the first time, the rich lived side by side with the poor. Wealth inequality was more apparent and church funerals began to be a resource for beggars to receive assistance.
During this time merchants who passed on left a large amount of their money to the church, which would distribute this money at their funerals to the poor. Monks also began to emerge within religion creating increased competition between the begging poor and the religious monks, especially in the streets of Paris. As more geographic regions in the world were explored due to technological advances, another period in the history of poverty emerged, colonialism.
As seen in the Spanish Inquisition and the conquering of Incan civilization in South America, poverty began to be a “consequence of plunder.” The documentary goes on to quote Latin-American commentator Oscar Gaurdiola-Rivera who explains, “behind every single form of modern poverty you find the use of force.” During the Spanish Inquisition diseases such as influenza and syphilis killed off more than 50 percent of the Incan population and eventually the Emperor of Inca was executed and the land conquered.
Around 1800, there was great economic success in China and the first emergency aid effort took place slightly before the 19 century. Essential tasks given to rulers during this time were famine and flood prevention. The system provided emergency relief to over two million people during the 1743 famine by bringing grain from stored supply to areas dealing with drought conditions. Public outcry began shortly after in Europe as a result of books such as Oliver Twist and the mass coverage of poverty in newspapers. During this same time period Karl Marx was developing his theories of communism and wealth inequalities became a major concern. As a result, governments across the world were overthrown and social welfare programs were put in place.
According to philosopher Thomas Pogge, poverty has two historic periods. The first is during the time people lived off the land and the second emerged along with large cities. Though there were many wrongs committed during the Industrial Revolution, including child labor and dangerous employment conditions, the Industrial Revolution was also responsible for a major reduction in poverty across the world. What was once 80 percent of the population living in poverty in 1800 is currently around 15-20 percent largely as a result of two centuries of this industrial revolution. Eventually the U.N. is created, signaling the end of colonialism and the rise of an era of rich countries and poor countries.
One example of why foreign aid is helpful is illustrated through the story of Mao’s Great Famine. In 1959, Chairman Mao put into place a communist system in China. He looked to China’s large population as the solution to poverty and denied foreign aid and help from other countries. As a result Mao’s great famine began and an estimated 30 million deaths occurred during this three-year period. The era of poverty, defined by rich countries helping poor countries, continued as foreign aid efforts and global cooperation increased.
Today there is nowhere poverty cannot be alleviated and that is the defining characteristic of this era of poverty. However, despite mass amounts of resources, economic disparity is widespread and the bottom 50 percent of the global population still earns less than three percent of the global household income. The BBC4 film notes if this percentage were raised to five percent, extreme poverty would be entirely eradicated. Migration has been one outcome of this concentrated form of poverty and people have left poor countries to come to rich countries in response. As a result the monetary outflow from poor countries is estimated to be equivalent to one trillion U.S. dollars, which is also equivalent to eight to ten times the amount of foreign aid that these same countries currently receive.
“Poor Us” delivers the history and facts of poverty in a compelling and enlightening manner. The film does well to outline the root causes of different periods of poverty and offers insight into the possibility that tomorrow’s poverty does not have to be a reality. Mangan, in describing the film, writes, “You were richer for watching it.” I imagine the pun was intended.
The most significant lesson the film can offer is that there have been many different types of seemingly unavoidable poverty throughout history but today, for the first time, it is finally possible to make poverty, history.
– Christopher Kolezynski
Sources: The Guardian, YouTube, Why Poverty?
Photo: Youtube