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The relativity of poverty
Franklin W Knight
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
The first European to venture into the Caribbean described the local people he met there as having very little and being poor in everything. <span style="font-weight: bold">But Christopher Columbus, like many later tourists, was hardly the most reliable of judges</span>. Like Sarah Palin, he was not inhibited by his intellectual deficiencies. He had only been in the locality a few days. He spoke none of the local languages. And his credentials for wealth assessment were hardly convincing. As an adventurer he was a consistent loser and even at the moment of writing had inadvertently lost his way to China. Most of all, he failed to realise that poverty is relative.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The people of the Caribbean in 1492 were not poor in everything. They were self-sufficient in food production. They seemed healthy. They were skilled at some crafts.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">In his log Columbus admitted that they could spin large cotton balls, and made boats "every bit as fine as those I have seen in Guinea." He also noted their spontaneous generosity.</span> They obviously lacked the abundance of precious metals and spices that Columbus wished to steal or trade.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Nevertheless, the later Europeans transformed the Caribbean in every way.</span> They brought in new people. They introduced new animals and new crops. <span style="font-weight: bold">They altered the society, the customs, the culture and the economy, integrating the region into a wider Atlantic and world commercial system. They institutionalised dependency.</span> Having exploited the region and its peoples for hundreds of years, the Europeans and North Americans shunted the region and its people to the periphery of international affairs. Abandoned and partly forgotten, the Caribbean has, all things considered, done reasonably well for itself.
<span style="font-style: italic">As a region, the Caribbean is deficient in many natural resources that provide the basis for individual and national wealth</span>. <span style="font-style: italic">But that is not the same as bereft of everything as Columbus asserted</span>. Small amounts of gold are found in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Guyana. Bauxite is found in Guyana, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Trinidad has petroleum and natural gas, and domestic Cuban supplies meet about one-fifth of that country's daily petroleum needs. Guyana and Belize have solid stocks of timber. Most territories of any size are agricultural producers, but only the Dominican Republic currently ranks among the few countries of the world capable of feeding itself. Most of the component territories are heavily dependent on tourism for their economic viability.
Neither in 1492 nor today is the Caribbean a homogenous region. Considerable variety exists both within individual states and between territories, so one has to be very careful about making general statements. Some areas are conspicuously well-to-do. Others are not. There are pockets of poverty everywhere, and the country of Haiti ranks among the poorest in the world. Such a diverse situation could be found anywhere in the world. But all too often the Caribbean finds itself lumped all together.
<span style="font-weight: bold">There is considerable myopia in using wealth or poverty as the index of national or regional well-being</span>. Wealth and poverty are normally determined by measuring national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or by estimating per capita income. These measures are notorious for disguising more important aspects of a society such as the quality of life and even economic sustainability. Indeed, this emerges when one compares tables of Gross Domestic Product and approximate per capita purchasing power.
Caribbean states rank prominently among those with the highest GDP per head. Bermuda, while not technically a Caribbean state (although it pioneered the colonisation of the Bahamas), ranks second in the world, only surpassed by Luxembourg. The Cayman Islands ranks 21st, ahead of Australia, Canada and Italy. Aruba ranks 25th , beating New Zealand, Spain and Hong Kong. The Virgin Islands at number 33 and Puerto Rico at number 40 come out ahead of Portugal. Others in the top 60 places include the Bahamas, Martinique, the Netherlands Antilles, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Guadeloupe.
No Caribbean state falls within the bottom 20 in GDP per head or in purchasing power parity compared with the United States. Christopher Columbus proved as incompetent at diagnosing the Caribbean reality as at predicting the Caribbean future.
Despite its relative limitations in natural resources, the Caribbean ranks very highly when considering the quality of life. In 1990 the United Nations Development Programme started to estimate quality of life in various societies by combining material conditions with such statistics as life expectancy, adult literacy, and individual freedom. It created a scale from zero to 100 and established a ranking whereby states that scored above 80 were declared to demonstrate high human development factors. States scoring between 50 and 79 were in the middle and those with a score below 50 were low.
Barbados scored a significant 87.8 while the Bahamas, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago all scored above 80 points. No Caribbean country scored less than 50 points.
It is quite clear from the performances on the human development index that across the Caribbean there is a high premium on human resources. People matter, and the human dimension has always been a significant consideration in the lives of the people of the Caribbean.
That is why educational achievement features so prominently and why so many governments place an emphasis on public health and preventive medicine. Cuba is widely considered to lead the world in public health and preventive medicine.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The vast economic and social crises permeating the richest countries in the world that once vaunted their universal expertise provide some sobering observations about wealth and poverty. The most obvious is that developed countries are no better than Columbus at predicting economic conditions. </span>Another is that while the more developed countries might be able to look after themselves, they will not support their dependents. As a dependent area, therefore, the Caribbean will have to look after itself. That will require unusually creative measures not only at the local level but also at a regional level. Visionary leadership is of paramount importance.
Franklin W Knight
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
The first European to venture into the Caribbean described the local people he met there as having very little and being poor in everything. <span style="font-weight: bold">But Christopher Columbus, like many later tourists, was hardly the most reliable of judges</span>. Like Sarah Palin, he was not inhibited by his intellectual deficiencies. He had only been in the locality a few days. He spoke none of the local languages. And his credentials for wealth assessment were hardly convincing. As an adventurer he was a consistent loser and even at the moment of writing had inadvertently lost his way to China. Most of all, he failed to realise that poverty is relative.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The people of the Caribbean in 1492 were not poor in everything. They were self-sufficient in food production. They seemed healthy. They were skilled at some crafts.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">In his log Columbus admitted that they could spin large cotton balls, and made boats "every bit as fine as those I have seen in Guinea." He also noted their spontaneous generosity.</span> They obviously lacked the abundance of precious metals and spices that Columbus wished to steal or trade.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Nevertheless, the later Europeans transformed the Caribbean in every way.</span> They brought in new people. They introduced new animals and new crops. <span style="font-weight: bold">They altered the society, the customs, the culture and the economy, integrating the region into a wider Atlantic and world commercial system. They institutionalised dependency.</span> Having exploited the region and its peoples for hundreds of years, the Europeans and North Americans shunted the region and its people to the periphery of international affairs. Abandoned and partly forgotten, the Caribbean has, all things considered, done reasonably well for itself.
<span style="font-style: italic">As a region, the Caribbean is deficient in many natural resources that provide the basis for individual and national wealth</span>. <span style="font-style: italic">But that is not the same as bereft of everything as Columbus asserted</span>. Small amounts of gold are found in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Guyana. Bauxite is found in Guyana, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Trinidad has petroleum and natural gas, and domestic Cuban supplies meet about one-fifth of that country's daily petroleum needs. Guyana and Belize have solid stocks of timber. Most territories of any size are agricultural producers, but only the Dominican Republic currently ranks among the few countries of the world capable of feeding itself. Most of the component territories are heavily dependent on tourism for their economic viability.
Neither in 1492 nor today is the Caribbean a homogenous region. Considerable variety exists both within individual states and between territories, so one has to be very careful about making general statements. Some areas are conspicuously well-to-do. Others are not. There are pockets of poverty everywhere, and the country of Haiti ranks among the poorest in the world. Such a diverse situation could be found anywhere in the world. But all too often the Caribbean finds itself lumped all together.
<span style="font-weight: bold">There is considerable myopia in using wealth or poverty as the index of national or regional well-being</span>. Wealth and poverty are normally determined by measuring national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or by estimating per capita income. These measures are notorious for disguising more important aspects of a society such as the quality of life and even economic sustainability. Indeed, this emerges when one compares tables of Gross Domestic Product and approximate per capita purchasing power.
Caribbean states rank prominently among those with the highest GDP per head. Bermuda, while not technically a Caribbean state (although it pioneered the colonisation of the Bahamas), ranks second in the world, only surpassed by Luxembourg. The Cayman Islands ranks 21st, ahead of Australia, Canada and Italy. Aruba ranks 25th , beating New Zealand, Spain and Hong Kong. The Virgin Islands at number 33 and Puerto Rico at number 40 come out ahead of Portugal. Others in the top 60 places include the Bahamas, Martinique, the Netherlands Antilles, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Guadeloupe.
No Caribbean state falls within the bottom 20 in GDP per head or in purchasing power parity compared with the United States. Christopher Columbus proved as incompetent at diagnosing the Caribbean reality as at predicting the Caribbean future.
Despite its relative limitations in natural resources, the Caribbean ranks very highly when considering the quality of life. In 1990 the United Nations Development Programme started to estimate quality of life in various societies by combining material conditions with such statistics as life expectancy, adult literacy, and individual freedom. It created a scale from zero to 100 and established a ranking whereby states that scored above 80 were declared to demonstrate high human development factors. States scoring between 50 and 79 were in the middle and those with a score below 50 were low.
Barbados scored a significant 87.8 while the Bahamas, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago all scored above 80 points. No Caribbean country scored less than 50 points.
It is quite clear from the performances on the human development index that across the Caribbean there is a high premium on human resources. People matter, and the human dimension has always been a significant consideration in the lives of the people of the Caribbean.
That is why educational achievement features so prominently and why so many governments place an emphasis on public health and preventive medicine. Cuba is widely considered to lead the world in public health and preventive medicine.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The vast economic and social crises permeating the richest countries in the world that once vaunted their universal expertise provide some sobering observations about wealth and poverty. The most obvious is that developed countries are no better than Columbus at predicting economic conditions. </span>Another is that while the more developed countries might be able to look after themselves, they will not support their dependents. As a dependent area, therefore, the Caribbean will have to look after itself. That will require unusually creative measures not only at the local level but also at a regional level. Visionary leadership is of paramount importance.
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