If you want to help poor people, and the only information you have is that they literally are without money, the only conclusion you can get from this data is that if you give them some money, you will make them less poor… well, at least in the short term.
Having information about how specifically these people are and remain poor shows opportunities for other interventions, some of which might be more effective. Thus I would like to know the most frequent “templates” for poverty.
The linked article describes a person who studies and works at two jobs, and lives in an area far away from many useful or cheap things. This can give some specific ideas about helping them. For example giving them enough money to keep only one job; or providing them a free ride to the nearest city. Some of these ideas may be more effective than others; for example if there are more people in the same area with the same problem, you could drive them to the city together by bus, instead of each of them in a separate car. Or a big refrigerator shared among multiple families. Or an advice about how to solve unusual situations that happen once in a while and they have no time to research.
Then there are people who are poor because they don’t have a job, and don’t even have the education necessary for the job. In that case, completely different specific ideas may be helpful; for example providing them the education or a simple work experience they could mention at a job interview. Or educating their children for free if they fail to understand something at school. Or perhaps teaching them how to do something useful for themselves and their neighbors, if free time is not a constraint. There are possible projects where they provide the work, and you pay for the materials and tools they need. Etc.
I always imagined the latter to be a typical example, and didn’t think much about the former. Now that I think about it, all the information I have on the former are from USA, while I have a lot of information on the latter from my country, so maybe it’s something country-specific. But maybe it’s just my limited information.
EDIT: The original article which inspired these thoughts was a hoax, so whatever conclusions were built on the provided information are extremely unreliable.
If you want to help poor people, and the only information you have is that they literally are without money, the only conclusion you can get from this data is that if you give them some money, you will make them less poor… well, at least in the short term.
Having information about how specifically these people are and remain poor shows opportunities for other interventions, some of which might be more effective. Thus I would like to know the most frequent “templates” for poverty.
The linked article describes a person who studies and works at two jobs, and lives in an area far away from many useful or cheap things. This can give some specific ideas about helping them. For example giving them enough money to keep only one job; or providing them a free ride to the nearest city. Some of these ideas may be more effective than others; for example if there are more people in the same area with the same problem, you could drive them to the city together by bus, instead of each of them in a separate car. Or a big refrigerator shared among multiple families. Or an advice about how to solve unusual situations that happen once in a while and they have no time to research.
Then there are people who are poor because they don’t have a job, and don’t even have the education necessary for the job. In that case, completely different specific ideas may be helpful; for example providing them the education or a simple work experience they could mention at a job interview. Or educating their children for free if they fail to understand something at school. Or perhaps teaching them how to do something useful for themselves and their neighbors, if free time is not a constraint. There are possible projects where they provide the work, and you pay for the materials and tools they need. Etc.
I always imagined the latter to be a typical example, and didn’t think much about the former. Now that I think about it, all the information I have on the former are from USA, while I have a lot of information on the latter from my country, so maybe it’s something country-specific. But maybe it’s just my limited information.
EDIT: The original article which inspired these thoughts was a hoax, so whatever conclusions were built on the provided information are extremely unreliable.