The Ethics of Human Rights (70): A Human Right to Non-Existence?

Can people have a human right not to exist? This potential right has to be distinguished from the right to die or the right to end your life. In fact, what I’m talking about here is a right not to be born. Can a potential or prospective person have a right that forces her potential parents not to act in such a way that she comes into existence?

It’s common to hear people claim that, in some circumstances, it’s in a person’s interest for her parents to not act in such a way that leads to her conception and birth. And when there’s an interest there’s possibly a right as well. The specific circumstances people often refer to are, for example, the likelihood of genetic defects in the parents that would lead to a life of suffering for the potential child. Indeed, it’s uncontroversial that we can cause harm to a child by bringing about her existence, and when there is harm, there’s often also a right to be protected against such harm.

Less common these days is for people to argue that those who are “burdened” in non-genetic ways – such as the poor – should also not procreate owing to the risk that their children would find themselves leading similarly dismal lives.

So, if prospective parents are in a position to know or to be told that their potential children will lead a life not worth living because of genetic reasons, should they respect the so-called right to non-existence of these potential children? This right – if it exists – imposes a duty on prospective parents not to beget miserable children.

(A short parenthesis: suppose there is such a right not to exist, does that right not imply the existence of the “mirror-right”, namely a right of prospective children to exist when their lives will be very rewarding? In other words, do people have a duty to procreate in some circumstances? Most human rights imply their mirror-right: the right to free association implies the right to leave associations or to not associate at all; the right to free speech implies the right to remain silent; freedom of religion implies freedom from religion etc.

However, the presence of a mirror-right doesn’t always seem to be a necessary corollary of a right. The right to a free trial or the right to be free from discrimination don’t seem to imply any mirror-rights. If we assume, temporarily, that there is a right not to exist, we don’t need to assume that the mirror-right should also exist, if only because there are some serious problems with the possible right to exist, as I’ve argued elsewhere).

Back to the main point of the argument. If you want to defend the right to non-existence you have to distinguish between two cases:

1. a right to non-existence belonging to a possible future child, and
2. a right to non-existence belonging to a future child.

Case 1 is a right of potential children before conception, and this right would – if we agree that it exists – justify (forced) sterilization and such. Which is already one indication that such a right does not or should not exist. Case 2 is a right of a fetus not to be born, and is a right that would justify some types of abortion.

If we accept the right to non-existence in case 1, we won’t impose harm on children – because they never leave the stage of potential being – but we may impose harm on parents’ procreation rights, privacy rights, physical integrity rights etc. If we accept the right in case 2, we will impose harm on parents if we have to force them to have an abortion in order to protect the fetus’ right to non-existence.

In either case, however, we are dealing with “people” who can’t possibly claim their right to non-existence for themselves, either because they don’t (yet) exist, or because they exist in a form in which they can claim rights. Hence, when we act to realize the right to non-existence, we always act on behalf of the wellbeing of others, potential others even. Given the many problems linked to paternalism, the burden of proof must be very high before we engage in such actions. For instance, it should be abundantly clear that “a life of unbearable suffering” will indeed be unbearable: a life of poverty and illiteracy would still be valuable enough and would not trigger the right to non-existence of the potential children of the poor and illiterate. Hence it would also fail to trigger paternalistic actions such as forced sterilization or forced abortion. On the other hand, a life of constant physical pain brought about by genetic facts could perhaps be of sufficiently low value to trigger the right and the corresponding paternalistic actions, although I personally find it repugnant to consider forced abortion or forced sterilization.

Also, the fact that the bearers of the right in question can’t possibly claim it themselves – either because they’re still a fetus or because they are as yet potential human beings (some, by the way, would claim that a fetus is also no more than a potential human being) – could indicate that it’s impossible to talk about a right in this case. However, some children and comatose patients also can’t claim their rights, but that’s no reason to state that they don’t have any. Maybe it would be better to frame the issue, not in terms of rights, but in terms of the duties that parents have when considering a decision to procreate. And yes, there can be duties without corresponding rights: if I have a duty to respect my promises given to you, you don’t have a corresponding human right to have these promises respected.

Related Articles

• Brazilian Woman Forced to Carry Fetus Without a Brain (womensrights.change.org)
• shall we end humanity right here, right now? (3quarksdaily.com)
• Should This Be the Last Generation? (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Hundreds of Uzbek Women Report Forced Sterilization (womensrights.change.org)
• Finnis and Singer debate moral status of embryo at Princeton (exlaodicea.wordpress.com)

The Ethics of Human Rights (68): The Case Against the Sale of Human Organs

Or, better, a case against it. I believe that trade in human organs is morally wrong, at least if this trade is free and unregulated (but perhaps also when it’s regulated in some way). I don’t think the same case can be made against the sale of body products such as blood, hair etc., although some of the arguments against the sale of organs may also apply to the sale in body products. I will bracket this problem for now and concentrate on organs.

I make the argument against organ sales knowing full well that there’s a huge problem of organ shortages and that some people will benefit from free organ trade, and may even lose their lives if free trade is not allowed. Hence, if I claim that free organ trade is morally wrong, then I’m not necessarily making the claim that it should be forbidden in all circumstances. If there are other wrongs, such as people avoidably losing their lives, that overwhelm the wrongs resulting from organ trade, then the former wrongs may be preferable all things considered. However, I believe that the latter wrongs are commonly underestimated by those defending the legality of organ sales. I also believe that there’s a blindspot common among those who claim that the wrongs resulting from a ban on sales typically outweigh the wrongs resulting from a free organ market: it’s not as if the only choice is the one between the status quo – which is in most cases a ban on sales resulting in organ shortages – and a free organ market. There are other and perhaps better solutions to the shortage problem, even in the short term.

Here are some of the reasons why I believe a free organ markets causes serious wrongs:

1. Coercion by poverty

Not a single wealthy person will ever need or want to sell his or her organs. In a system of free organ trade, it’s the poor who will sell their organs to the rich. Maybe a legalized market will reduce the wealth disparity between buyers and sellers to some extent, given the fact that the number of potential sellers will be higher in a free market and that the number of potential buyers will not. This increase in supply compared to demand, following legalization, will reduce prices somewhat, making it feasible for more people to buy organs. Still, it will almost always be the relatively rich buying from the relatively poor, especially if the market is a global one (and I find it hard to understand arguments in favor of a free market limited to national borders).

Many of these poor will be desperately poor, particularly if the market is globally free. A decision to sell an organ isn’t made lightly, and requires some level of financial desperation. The extraction of an organ still carries a substantial risk (e.g. 1 in 3000 die from a kidney extraction even in the best medical circumstances), and few will be willing to take this risk from a baseline situation of wellbeing or happiness that is moderately high and that can not or need not be substantially improved by financial means.

Hence, if organ trade is allowed, many sellers will be desperately poor people, and there will be more of those in a legalized market than in a black market. Now it’s clear that desperation can be coercive: it forces people to do things that they would not otherwise do, that entail risks that they would avoid at higher levels of wellbeing, that may be harmful for them, and that go against their better judgment. If coercion is wrong, then free organ trade is wrong because free organ trade multiplies the number of desperately poor people that feel coerced to sell their organs.

2. Trade instead of justice

It’s reasonable to assume that rich people are responsible for the poverty that exists in the world, if not directly through their actions (trade policy, colonization etc.) then through their failure to prevent or remedy poverty. It will almost invariably be the same rich people who will want to buy organs from poor people. Now, if you first create poverty (or fail to do something about it, which in my mind is equivalent) and then tell poor people that you’ll give them money but only if they give you their organs in return, then you add insult to injury: you have a moral duty to give them your money unconditionally. Insisting on the possibility of trade while neglecting the necessity of justice is wrong.

3. Objectification and instrumentalization

There are some other good reasons why it’s wrong to buy an organ from someone, even if this person willingly agrees to the sale on the basis of informed consent, and even if he or she isn’t coerced into the sale by his or her poverty and isn’t someone who has a moral and unconditional right to the money he or she would get from a sale. For instance, buying an organ from someone means treating this person as an object and a means. It’s a failure to respect the person’s dignity as a being that should be treated as an end in itself rather than as a shop or an organ factory. It’s not outrageous to view organ trade as a new form of cannibalism.

4. Unjust distribution

The previous 3 arguments against organ trade focused on the wrongs it imposes on the sellers. But even the buyers are treated unjustly in a system of free organ sales. If the distribution of organs is regulated solely by way of free trade, then the patients who are most in need of an organ are not the ones who will get the organs. It will instead be those patients able to pay most who will get them.

5. Crowding out altruism

There’s even an argument that points to possible harm to society as a whole. If more and more human relationships are brought within the cash nexus, then giving and altruism will be crowded out. It’s obviously the case that when people can get money for something, they will stop giving it for free. Human nature is what it is. But given what it is, we shouldn’t encourage its darker sides. It’s reasonable to assume that free donation of organs will all but disappear when people can get cash for them. And it’s also reasonable to assume that this reduction in altruism can have a ripple effect throughout society and in many other fields of life, especially when we take account of the fact that more and more activities have already been brought within the cash nexus: sex, reproduction, politics …

No one assumes that everything should be tradable. Even the most outspoken proponents of organ trade draw the line somewhere: they won’t allow people to sell parts of their brains, I guess, or their children and wives, or the parts of aborted fetuses (perhaps fetuses specially conceived and harvested for their parts). So we have to stop somewhere and disallow the trade of some things. Why should it be evident that organs are not one step too far?

Alternatives

If organ sales do have harmful consequences, then what are the alternatives? If we don’t want to allow those willing to sell to go about and legally sell their organs to those capable of buying them, then how do we solve the shortage problem and save the lives of those in need of organs? We can do several things:

• We can try to increase the number of free cadaveric donations, by improving the way we approach bereaved relatives, by introducing a system of presumed consent, by promoting explicit consent (for example through the introduction of regulations that allay fears that doctors will stop life support when they need organs, or through some sort of priority system in which those who have pledged cadaveric donation can jump the queue when they themselves need organs) etc.
• We can try to increase living donation, by way of awareness campaigns.
• We can hope for scientific breakthroughs that make cadaveric recovery of organs easier or live donations less risky, or that make it possible to grow organ in vitro.

Organ sale is certainly not the only solution to the shortage problem.

A final remark: given the fact that proponents of organ trade often rely on the right to self-ownership – the right to do with your body as you please – we may have to tone down the importance of that right. Which is something we’ll have to do anyway: for instance, there’s no welfare state if the right to self-ownership is absolute.

More on organ sales, exploitation, instrumentalization and objectification.

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Discrimination (13): Is Disability Just a Case of Bad Luck or Is It Discrimination?

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When people think about disability they usually don’t see it as a moral issue. A disabled person supposedly suffers from bad luck, and the problems she encounters while living her life with a disability don’t result from the decisions or actions of her fellow citizens. They are instead caused by ill health or by biological and anatomical inadequacies, things for which no one is to blame. Brute misfortune, that is all.

Of course, a disability can be caused by someone else’s misconduct, for example industrial pollution or paralyssis following an accident caused by someone else. However, let’s focus on blameless disability, the kind that is not anyone’s fault.

There’s a problem with the view that this kind of disability is no more than misfortune. The threshold level of normal human functioning that determines the difference between disability and non-disability isn’t just determined by biological facts, but also by social practices and the artificial social environment. For example, imagine a society that has developed technologically up to a point where people don’t have to use their hands anymore. No more computer keyboards, steering wheels in cars, remote controls etc. Let’s assume that everything that needs to be done can be done by programming and brain power (not a far-fetched assumption). A person who loses her hands in an accident will not be considered “disabled” in such a society. This accident will not push her below the threshold level of normal human functioning. In fact, most likely it won’t even be viewed as an accident, but rather a small nuisance, depending on the level of pain involved. Much like we in our existing societies react to a bee sting. It’s usually not disabling.

Now, when we take the same example of a person losing her hands, but situate her in a country such as the U.S. today, then we would say that she is disabled and that she has fallen below the threshold level of normal human functioning. But the reason we say this isn’t simply a biological or anatomical one, otherwise she would also have to be disabled in the imaginary society described a moment ago. The reason we say that she is disabled depends on the social circumstances and the social system in which she finds herself after losing her hands. Because U.S. society has been designed in such a way that people need to use their hands a lot of the time, we say that someone without hands is disabled. The decision to count someone as disabled has less to do with biology and anatomy than with the social practices and the artificial social environment we live in. The level of functioning a person can achieve depends less on her biological or anatomical abilities than on the artificial social environment in which she finds herself.

Hence, disability isn’t just something that happens to people; it’s something that we as a society have decided should happen to people. There’s nothing about our society that necessarily relegates people without hands to the category of the disabled. On the contrary, we have willingly designed our society in such a way that people without hands are disabled. We could just as well design our society in another way. Technology permitting, of course, but technology is also – up to a point – a choice: we just simply decided to develop technologies and the wider social environment in such a way that they don’t really take into account the needs of people without hands.

The fact that we designed our society in the way we did seems to indicate that we don’t care a lot about the disabled, at least not enough to do something for them. And such an absence of care can be viewed as a type of discrimination. After all, until some decades ago, men didn’t much care about the education of women, even though society was quite able to give women the same kind of education as men. The relative lack of education of women wasn’t a necessary fact of life but a choice. And that choice was a symptom of discrimination.

Of course, the analogy is shaky because gender discrimination was and is often a conscious choice, whereas the disabled are only rarely consciously disadvantaged. However, as I’ve stated before, the fact that discrimination is unconscious doesn’t automatically excuse it.

More on luck. More posts in this series.

Related Articles

• Wishful thinking won’t bring equality for disabled people | Zoe Williams (guardian.co.uk)
• More disabled workers file discrimination claims in 2009 (usatoday.com)
• Disability Discrimination – Part I (specialeducationlawblog.blogspot.com)

What Are Human Rights? (39): Human Rights and Human Duties

For some people, there’s too much talk about human rights. They see human rights as a symptom of a typically modern type of moral decay, of a culture of self-importance and egoism, and of an exaggerated sense of entitlement. We want more and more of society and the state, and at the same time we are less willing to contribute. Instead of rights talk, they say, we should promote a sense of duty. Instead of rights declarations and rights in constitutions and treaties, we should have lists of duties and responsibilities, and have the state enforce those duties rather than rights.

You often hear this duty talk when the topic is crime (defendants have “too many rights”) or anti-social behavior (whatever that means), but it seems to be focused mainly on economic human rights. Rather than a right to unemployment benefits people have a duty to work and to support themselves. Rather than a right to very expensive healthcare for everyone, people have a duty to live a healthy life. And so on.

My point here is not to deny the importance of the duties mentioned above, or of a lot of other duties. And neither do I want to claim that human rights talk can’t be frivolous (I have a whole ongoing blog series about “human rights nonsense“). I merely want to mention a couple of risks that come with duty talk. First of all, there’s the danger of rights becoming dependent on duties. If duties are given too much importance, people will be tempted to claim that your rights can only come after you have proven to be a responsible person. That would be wrong. Rights are unconditional. People have rights, end of story. They don’t have rights because they are responsible citizens respecting their social duties. Even irresponsible citizens, and even criminals have rights.

In addition, duty talk is somewhat superfluous. Duties are inherent in rights. Someone’s rights are everyone else’s duties. (It’s wrong to view respect for rights as the duty of the state only). I don’t have a right to violate your right; I have a duty to respect it. Rights would be meaningless words without such duties. So what’s the added value of emphasizing duties?

More posts in this series are here.

The Causes of Poverty (63): Stress, Ctd.

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Poor people are often blamed for their own poverty. And indeed, it’s not difficult to find anecdotal evidence of poor people doing dumb and self-destructive things. However, even if we assume – and that’s a big if – that this evidence can be confirmed by more rigorous statistical analysis, then we’re still not allowed to claim that stupidity is in general – and not just in some cases – an important cause of poverty. First, it may very well be the case that everyone, rich and poor, is likely to make the same stupid mistakes but that the poor just have a smaller margin of error. The same stupid mistake made by a poor person costs him or her more dearly. Rich people on the other hand can afford to be stupid. Second, even if it’s true that the poor are on average somewhat more stupid and self-destructive, they should perhaps not be blamed for this. There’s some evidence from psychology that the pressure and stress of poverty reduces our cognitive abilities:

In a behavioral economics experiment several years ago, researchers asked shoppers at a New Jersey mall to handle the following decision: Have your faulty car repaired for either $150 or $1,500. While the participants were considering how to decide, they were given simple cognitive tasks like solving puzzles.

The researchers, Prof. Eldar Shafir and Jiaying Zhao, both from Princeton University, and Harvard University Prof. Sendhil Mullainathan, expected that the stress from contemplating the $1,500 expense would hurt performance. They were right. But participants with above-average incomes succeeded in their tasks under both scenarios, while those with average or low incomes did worse as repair costs climbed.

Even the prospect of spending any money at all damaged the ability of low-income earners to think rationally. (source)

Other tests measured IQ before and after a harvest, i.e. in uncertain times and in more comfortable times:

The farmers had better IQ results during the season of plenty. Before the harvest they had problems making fateful decisions, because of stress. (source)

The stress of poverty causes distractions, which in turn show up as cognitive deficiencies. It’s not cognitive deficiencies that cause poverty but the other way around. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the causality goes both ways.

More on poverty and behavior, on poverty and stress, on poverty and intelligence and on poverty and brain functions.

More posts in this series.

What is Equality? (4): Equality of Opportunity

I wasn’t very pleased with my previous attempts, so here’s one more. Equality of opportunity is a type of equality that’s usually seen as a very moderate one, one that’s not too demanding – especially compared to other types of equality that focus on equal outcomes – and hence it’s supposed to be acceptable to those of us who are a bit squeamish about equality. However, I’ll try to show that this is a mistake. Real equality of opportunity is a very ambitious and difficult project. In order to show that, I’ll talk first about some of the causes of inequality of opportunity, and then about the things we can do to reduce this inequality.

Four source of inequality of opportunity

1. Unequal endowments and circumstances

Equality of opportunity means that different people should have an equal chance of success in a certain life project, conditional on the willingness to invest an equal amount of effort. Of course, in reality, people will never have such an equal chance. The lottery of birth means that we are unable to choose to be born in a wealthy family with caring parents who can finance our education and motivate us to achieve our goals. It also means that we can’t choose which talents and genes we are born with. Talents and genetic differences are no more a matter of choice than the character and means of our parents. And genetic differences affect our talents, skills and maybe even our capacity to invest effort. (It’s not impossible that they even determine our choices of projects in which we want to be successful). So two people with the same life projects will only rarely have the same chance of success.

What can we do to equalize their chances? We can’t (yet) redistribute beneficial genes or disable harmful ones, and we don’t want to intervene in people’s families (and force parents to behave in a certain way or possibly even redistribute children). So we can’t remove the impact of genes and parents. But we can correct it, partially. For example, we can compensate people born with a genetic defect that reduces their chances of success in their life projects. We can offer people suffering from a genetic disorder that has left them paralyzed certain instruments to enhance their mobility. We can offer children born in dysfunctional or poor families free education, child benefits and encouragement. Etc.

2. Discrimination

Equality of opportunity also means correcting for lack of opportunity not resulting from the lottery of birth. If African Americans are systematically discriminated in employment, then they don’t enjoy equality of opportunity. They don’t have an equal chance of success in employment. If working for a certain company is part of an African American’s life project, and this company prefers white employees, then this African American doesn’t have an equal chance of success in his life project compared to whites with the same project.

The rule of equality of opportunity is only violated when the African American is rejected for no other reason than his race, and when this rejection diminishes that person’s opportunities (in other words, when this rejection is common and widespread rather than occasional; see here). If his skills, talents, merit and efforts are equal to those of other candidates, he should have an equal chance of employment or advancement. Equality of opportunity means that he should be allowed to compete for positions on equal terms, and that the difference between winners and losers in such competitions can only be a difference based on skills, talents, merit or efforts. However, even when he is rejected for the position because his skills, talents, merit and efforts are below the level of those of other candidates, he may not have been granted equality of opportunity. That is because the lottery of birth (point 1 above) has landed him in a discriminated group and because his lesser skills and willingness to invest effort and strive for merit may be caused by this discrimination.

Even if all are eligible to apply for a … position and applications are judged fairly on their merits, one might hold that genuine or substantive equality of opportunity requires that all have a genuine opportunity to become qualified. (source)

3. Misfortune in life

The natural lottery can reduce your equality of opportunity. Misfortune in the circumstances of your upbringing (bad parents, bad schools etc.) can also do it. And discrimination throughout your life as well. On top of that, other types of misfortune can limit your opportunities: you may get sick or have an accident. So we have to promote equality of opportunity at every step in people’s lives.

4. Neglect of abilities and talents

And there’s yet one additional cause of inequality of opportunity. Until now, I’ve assumed that equality of opportunity means that different people should have an equal chance of success in a certain life project. But maybe people have an equal chance of success in whatever life project they choose (as long as the project is morally acceptable of course). If society recognizes, rewards and encourages only certain talents and abilities, then some people will not be able to be successful in the life projects that they choose and that are compatible with their talents and abilities. For example, it’s fair to say that someone like Elton John would not have enjoyed equality of opportunity in Sparta or Saudi Arabia.

How to promote equality of opportunity?

If we accept all that, then the promotion of equality of opportunity involves different things:

1. Social structures or traditions

At the most basic level, it means getting rid of social structures or traditions that assign people to fixed places in a social hierarchy, to occupations or to life projects on a basis that has nothing to do with skills, abilities, talents, merit and efforts. Patriarchy, in which women are forced to focus on family life and raising children, is incompatible with equality of opportunity. As is a caste society, a society in which racial or other minorities (or majorities) are systematically discriminated against, or a class society in which the class of your parents, your blood line, your religion, your friends and relationships (nepotism) determine your chances of success in life. Getting rid of such social structures and traditions may simply require legislation outlawing them, or may also require affirmative action or positive discrimination and other forms of compensation for past wrongs (if some still benefit in the present from past wrongs, then equality of opportunity will not be respected simply because the wrongs have ended).

2. Equalizing skills, abilities and talents

But the promotion of equality of opportunity also means equalizing skills, abilities and talents, to the extent that this is possible (e.g. offering poor children free education of the same quality as the education and private tutoring offered to children born in wealthy families). And compensating people when this isn’t possible (e.g. give a blind man some help if we can’t cure his blindness).

3. Upgrading ambitions

And the promotion of equality of opportunity means reducing differences in merit and effort that are not the consequences of people’s voluntary choices. E.g. a child raised in a poor and dysfunctional family may have involuntarily adapted her ambitions downwards. Helping her at a young age may allow us to prevent this down-scaling of ambitions. Perhaps this down-scaling of ambitions is the result of the structures and traditions described in 1 above.

4. Other types of misfortune

The promotion of equality of opportunity also means helping people whose skills, abilities, talents, merit and efforts have been limited by misfortune different from the misfortune caused by the lottery of birth. If two people have the same ambition, talents and skill to become a lawyer – perhaps after social corrections to their initial starting positions in life (e.g. free schooling for the poorest one of them) and after legislation providing equal employment access (e.g. for the black lawyer-to-be) – but an accident leaves one of them blind, maybe society should provide that person with law books in Braille and such.

5. Recognizing abilities

And, finally, it means that a broad range of talents and abilities should be recognized and rewarded in society, with the exception of those that involve limitations of other people’s talents and abilities.

Limits of equality of opportunity

So equality of opportunity is a very ambitious and far-reaching project, contrary to what people usually believe about this type of equality. Hence we have to limit it somehow. For example, it shouldn’t extend to people’s private lives. You can’t demand that the girl next door marries you even if that’s your project in life and even if you think you’re the best candidate who didn’t have his equal opportunity. And the girl can decide not to marry you simply because you’re black. A club of racists can decide not to accept your membership request. A racist restaurant owner can decide not to serve you food on his private property. None of this diminishes your equality of opportunity, at least not as long as enough of the same opportunities exist for you elsewhere.

There will be a problem of equality of opportunity if all or many restaurants, clubs etc. turn you away. But if that’s not the case, and enough of the same opportunities remain elsewhere, even businesses can discriminate on the basis of race in their employment decisions, as long as this practice is not widespread and not part of a wider system of discrimination not limited to employment. If, in a perfectly tolerant and egalitarian society, there’s one bakery insisting on being racist and refusing to hire or serve blacks, who cares? (More here).

Equality of opportunity and statistical discrimination

However, discrimination in employment doesn’t have to be taste based, as they say. It can be mere statistical discrimination. Is that a violation of equality of opportunity? I would say yes, because discrimination is discrimination and whatever the motives are – a taste for discrimination or just prudence based of statistical averages – it diminishes the opportunities of those affected by it. People who engage in statistical discrimination make no effort to assess the skills, merit and talents of individuals.

More on equality of opportunity. More on the related topics of social mobility and meritocracy (a meritocracy can only exist when there’s equality of opportunity, otherwise people can’t be said to get what they deserve; and a society without or with low social mobility is unlikely to be one that respects equality of opportunity).

Related Articles

• 25 reviews of Equal Opportunity (rateitall.com)
• What is Equal Opportunity? (brainz.org)
• Knesset Expands Equal Opportunity Law (israelnationalnews.com)

Ironic Human Rights Violations (12): Efforts to Promote Toilet Use Backfire

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Sorry for the distasteful pun in the title of this post, but I simply couldn’t resist. The fight against public defecation and the promotion of toilet use – euphemistically called “public sanitation” – is an important human rights issue. Public health is at risk when lots of people regularly defecate in the streets, and good health is a human right. Giving people toilets and promoting the use of toilets is therefore an important public policy.

However, it seems that in some places, such as in rural India, the policy leads to coercion:

[T]he measures used to encourage the use of toilets range from stone-throwing and public humiliation to bizarre scare stories about congenital abnormalities. …

[I]n the southern Indian state of Karnataka … India’s national Total Sanitation Campaign had led to an astonishing rise from 20% toilet usage in the area to almost 100% in just two years. … Previous efforts to build toilets in the area failed to ensure actual use. They were often used to store firewood or chickens while families continued to defecate outdoors. …

The barriers to toilet usage were often emotional as much as practical. A Rajasthani once waxed lyrical to me on the joys of open defecation: “I used to go out into the desert with all my friends. We had our favourite spot – it was very beautiful and clean. Afterwards we’d all play games together, and then go again.”

Contrast this experience with the foul toilets at bus stations and hospitals, many people’s only experience of defecating indoors, and you get some idea of why officials and community leaders were united in viewing emotions as the key battleground for improved sanitation. From our very first meeting, everyone from senior bureaucrats to local kindergarten teachers talked proudly of their innovative approach to “persuading” the more reluctant members of the community to construct a toilet.

At its mildest, this meant squads of teachers and youths, who patrolled the fields and blew whistles when they spotted people defecating. Schoolchildren whose families did not have toilets were humiliated in the classroom. Men followed women – and vice versa – all day, denying people the opportunity even to urinate. …

Equally common, though, were more questionable tactics. Squads threw stones at people defecating. Women were photographed and their pictures displayed publicly. The local government institution, the gram panchayat, threatened to cut off households’ water and electricity supplies until their owners had signed contracts promising to build latrines. (source)

One more example of good intentions not being enough. More ironic human rights violations here.

Child Labor, A Collection of Images (3)

(Previous collections here, here and here. More informative posts on child labor are here and here).

Protest by BBA – Bachpan Bachao Andolan – the pioneering child-friendly organisation of India working to end child labour, child trafficking, and provide free education for all children since 1980

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child labor in the U.S.

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Child miner in the 1900s, U.S.

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Child miners in the 1900s, U.S.

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John Howell, an Indianapolis newsboy, makes $.75 some days. Begins at 6 a.m., Sundays. 1908

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Interior of tobacco shed, Hawthorn Farm. Girls in foreground are 8, 9, and 10 years old. The 10 yr. old makes 50 cents a day. 1917

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Human Rights Maps (178): Poverty and Road Safety

Another example of the “poverty kills” principle: in low-income neighborhoods in NYC, children face a higher risk from traffic. The same is probably true in any other city, but I only have data for NYC:

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Intersections near public housing appear to be particularly dangerous for children trying to cross the street. That is the case even after correction for a neighborhood’s population size. The design of roads, intersections and public housing complexes is probably one of the major causes of this, together with the fact that poor people and poor children in particular are more likely to use the roads as pedestrians (they have less entertainment alternatives and make less use of cars).

More human rights maps here.

The Causes of Poverty (61): Geography

Rice plantation

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It’s commonly accepted nowadays that a multitude of causes determines whether a country is relatively rich or poor. The fact that I’m currently writing post number 61 in this series points in the same direction. However, this means that it’s still possible for a particular cause to be dominant in certain countries, outweighing other existing effects. Some focus on institutions for example, others on geography. Let’s have a look at geography, and more specifically at the argument made by Jared Diamond. He cites some geological, geographical and climatological facts that do seem to have a large effect on national prosperity in certain countries:

• Tropical climates are notoriously unhealthy. There are more parasitic diseases in the tropics because the temperatures are never cold enough to kill parasites. Carriers of diseases, such as mosquitoes and ticks, are also far more diverse in tropical than in temperate areas. Furthermore, tropical diseases – compared to other diseases – are more difficult to combat with effective vaccines. There’s still no vaccine against malaria for instance. Disease is obviously a drag on economic growth: when large parts of a population are sick for extended periods of time, they are unable to work and trade efficiently. Furthermore, disease leads to high fertility rates – as an insurance against infant mortality – which in turn removes many women from the economy for a substantial part of their productive lives.
• Agricultural productivity is on average lower in tropical than in temperate areas. Temperate plants store more energy in edible parts such as seeds than do tropical plants. Plant diseases borne by insects and other pests reduce crop yields more in the tropics than in the temperate zones because the pests are more diverse and not subject to cold winters. The soils are also better in temperate climates (rainfall washes away the nutrients in tropical soils, and these soils are older and not renewed by glaciers).
• Landlocked countries are at an economic disadvantage: if an area is accessible to ships because it lies either on the sea coast or on a navigable river, then trade is easier and less costly: it costs roughly seven times more to ship a ton of cargo by land than by sea. Hence, landlocked countries profit less from the advantages of trade.
• Similar advantages are shared by countries that have abundant reserves of natural resources such as fresh water, forests, minerals, fuels etc. (Although dependence on natural resources can also be a curse).

This being said, there is no overwhelming correlation between national wealth and geographic conditions that supposedly promote wealth: there are countries that are more prosperous than they should be given their geographic endowments, and vice versa. Other factors must therefore play a part, most notably institutions.

More posts in this series here.

Human Rights Ads (76): Pro Choice

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Wire clothes hangers, because of their use in performing illegal or self-induced abortions (by unfolding and inserting one in the uterus), have become a symbol of pro-choice protests.

This is the original poster from communist Poland:

“we greet the women who work for peace and fatherland”

More on abortion, and on self-induced abortions more specifically. More ads.

Human Rights Facts (71): Poverty and Obesity, Ctd.

Photo of Celeata Baily, by Sharon Gekoski-Kimmel

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It’s a common enough refrain: the poor in rich countries such as the U.S. – or at least the majority of the poor who aren’t homeless – are not really poor. Historically speaking they are better off than their richest ancestors from some centuries ago. They have stuff the Lords of yesteryear could not have imagined. And the same is true if you compare them to the utterly destitute in the Third World.

This story is wrong on many levels:

• First, you need a lot more stuff to be able to earn a decent living in an industrial society than you do in an agricultural one.
• Second, people often think in relative terms when they are asked what “poverty” is, which means that they see poverty not just as absolute destitution but also as the inability to participate in society (poverty is as much a feeling as an objective reality: it’s both a sense of deprivation, inadequacy and exclusion and a lack of nutrition and shelter).
• Third, relative poverty can cause or aggravate absolute poverty: see here and here.
• And fourth, there’s some evidence that relative poverty causes certain harms irrespective of its effects on absolute poverty.

However, none of this seems to persuade those who look at the absolute living standards of the poor in developed countries and compare them to the distant and historical poor. One of the more common arguments: “if the poor in the West are really poor, how come so many of them are fat?” (One example of this argument is here).

The basis of the argument is correct, but not the conclusions drawn from it: the poor in the U.S for instance (but probably in other developed countries as well) are relatively more likely to suffer from overweight (although there are some who contest the data). This is particularly the case for poor women and children:

(source - “FPL” means Federal poverty line; some more data here and here)

Even among the homeless in the US – the subset of the poor whose food supply is probably most insecure – one third are obese.

The data seem to give support to those who claim that the poor can’t really be poor: if many of them are obese, they must have abundant food supplies, which means they have a financial surplus. But maybe it’s not abundance but the lack of quality food that causes overweight. Those who are poor and obese may live in neighborhoods where they can’t rely on public transportation as a means to diversify their diet (hence the concept of “food deserts”). Maybe kids in poor neighborhoods can’t enjoy good school meals or healthy exercise in public playgrounds. Maybe poor people also live in unsafe neighborhoods and feel that it’s better to stay inside as much as they can, etc.

Once you’ve considered the possibility that the poor are on average heavier than the rest of us because of reasons likes this, then you’ll understand that they can be both poor and overweight at the same time. Of course, it’s not clear if people will actually eat better and exercise more if they have the options to do so. There’s no single straight line from poverty to obesity, and obesity isn’t just the result of poverty and of the lack of access to healthy food and of physical exercise that it entails. Personal choices also play a role, as does genetics, pollution, lower rates of smoking, medical consumption etc.

Also, in case you’re wondering why this is a human rights issue: poverty causes obesity, obesity causes ill health, and ill health causes poverty. And both ill health and poverty are human rights violations (see here and here respectively). So plenty of reasons to link obesity and human rights.

More here, here and here.

The Causes of Poverty (59): Stress

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Stress is often a consequence of poverty, but it can also make poverty worse. Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee have noted in Poor Economics that

[t]here is a strong association between poverty and the level of cortisol produced by the body, an indicator of stress. Conversely, cortisol levels go down when households receive help. The children of the beneficiaries of PROGRESA, the Mexican cash transfer program [later renamed Oportunidades], have, for example, been found to have significantly lower levels of cortisol than comparable children whose mothers did not benefit from the program. (source)

Cortisol is a hormone, and high levels of it can cause brain dysfunctions which in turn make it difficult for affected individuals to escape their economic predicament.

The prefrontal cortex, for example, which is vital for suppressing impulsive responses, is rendered less effective by high cortisol levels, making us more likely to take hasty, ill-considered decisions. “When experimental subjects are artificially put under stressful conditions,” Duflo and Banerjee note, “they are less likely to make the economically rational decision when faced with choosing among different alternatives.” (source)

This poverty cycle or poverty trap can only be broken when external interventions reduce stress levels. For example, poor people can be given easier access to credit or insurance, which will reduce their fear of the future. They can be given a basic income. Etc. Perhaps cortisol-reducing medication is also an option.

More here on the way in which brain dysfunctions can cause poverty. And more here on the link between poverty, self-control and willpower. More posts in this blog series are here.

Economic Human Rights (41): Unemployment, a Cost-Benefit Analysis

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Unemployment is a violation of an individual’s right to work. It stunts her creativity and diminishes her wellbeing, in a material, moral and psychological sense, in many cases even pushing her into poverty, ill health and depression.

For a person with no pre-existing health conditions, losing one’s job increased the chances of reporting a new health problem by 83 percent. Overall, the newly unemployed had a 54 percent chance of reporting fair or poor health. (source, source)

Unemployment is also self-perpetuating because it makes it harder to find a new job – employers prefer candidates who already have a job. In addition, it depresses wage levels, even decades after the end of a spell of unemployment.

Needless to say, these costs don’t affect only the unemployed themselves. Their families and children also suffer:

We find that a parental job loss increases the probability of children’s grade retention by 0.8 percentage points, or around 15 percent. After conditioning on child fixed effects, there is no evidence of significantly increased grade retention prior to the job loss, suggesting a causal link between the parental employment shock and children’s academic difficulties. These effects are concentrated among children whose parents have a high school education or less. (source)

And the ripple effect of unemployment covers the whole of society. Unemployment has a social cost: above and beyond the fiscal pressure – unemployment benefits have to be paid, either through increased taxes or cuts in other public services – it deprives society of valuable input and human ingenuity.

Still, all these costs should not blind us to the real benefits that unemployment can bring. And I’m not talking about those few individuals who are “liberated” from their mind numbing jobs and take the chance offered by unemployment to start a successful business doing something they always wanted to do but never had the chance or guts to do. Neither am I referring to kidults reveling in “funemployment”, staying with their parents well into their twenties or beyond, and taking the opportunity to prolong their childhood. Those are not the majority of the unemployed.

However, some among the majority may also find a silver lining. Maybe unemployment makes them less materialistic and more financially prudent; maybe some of them will use their free time to volunteer and educate themselves; society may become humbler and gentler; maybe concerns for social justice become more prevalent since the unemployed, ex-unemployed and their friends and families have become more conscious of the role of luck in life’s outcomes, as compared to the limited role of desert. Some health indicators may improve:

Interestingly, though high-stress events such as foreclosures and unemployment may hurt the health of those directly impacted, there’s some evidence that recessions have a positive impact on a nation’s health overall. In 2000, Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, found that a 1 percent rise in a state’s unemployment rate led to a 0.6 percent decrease in total mortality, looking at mortality changes in the United States between 1972 and 1991. … economic downturns could improve health through “declines in smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and overeating during recessions as people look for ways to save money.” (source)

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Of course, there’s no way these benefits cancel out all of the costs. Unemployment is a scourge and a human rights violation, and capitalism doesn’t do itself any favors by maintaining and temporarily inflating its “industrial reserve army“.

More on the human cost of unemployment is here and here.

This may be the right time for some shameless self-promotion: a few years ago, I published a short book dealing exclusively with work – although that’s not what you would think when reading the title.

Economic Human Rights (40): How Do Poor People Live?

floodwater in Srinagar, Kashmir, India

(source unknown)

The poor tend to become a number, a statistic, an undifferentiated mass, especially here on this blog. Talk of the “bottom billion” and the one-dollar-a-day people only makes things worse. Of course, it’s important to know the numbers, if only to see how well we are doing in the struggle against poverty. But to actually know what we have to do, we need to know what poverty actually means to poor people. How do these people live? Which problems do they face? Who are they? None of this can be captured in numbers or statistics. Pure quantitative analysis doesn’t help. We need qualitative stories here, and these stories will necessarily differentiate between groups of people because poverty means different things to different people.

Keeping in mind the caveat that poverty is “multidimensional” and that it varies with the circumstances, is it possible to give a more or less general impression of the “lives of the poor”? There’s an interesting attempt here. Banerjee and Duflo analyzed survey data from 13 countries in order to distill a picture of the way people live on less than one dollar a day, of the choices they have and the limits and challenges they face.

The countries are Cote d’Ivoire, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, South Africa, Tanzania, and Timor Leste. Obviously, the lives of the poor are very different in these different countries, and vary even for different groups within each country. Still, some general information can be extracted:

• The number of adults (i.e. those over 18) living in a family ranges from about 2.5 to about 5, with a median of about 3, which suggests a family structure where it is common for adults to live with people they are not conjugally related to (parents, siblings, uncles, cousins, etc.). When every penny counts, it helps to spread the fixed costs of living (like housing) over a larger number of people. Poverty has consequences for family structure, and vice versa.
• Poor families have more children living with them. The fact that there are a large number of children in these families does not necessarily imply high levels of fertility, as families often have multiple adult women.
• The poor of the world are very young on average. Older people tend to be richer simply because they have had more time to accumulate resources.
• Food typically represents from 56 to 78 percent of consumption expenses among rural households, and 56 to 74 percent in urban areas.
• The poor consume on average slightly less than 1400 calories a day. This is about half of what the Indian government recommends for a man with moderate activity, or a woman with heavy physical activity. As a result, health is definitely a reason for concern. Among the poor adults in Udaipur, the average “body mass index” (that is, weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) is 17.8. Sixty-five percent of poor adult men and 40 percent of adult women have a body mass index below 18.5, the standard cutoff for being underweight. Eating more would improve their BMI and their health, and yet they choose to spend relatively large amounts on entertainment. Which just shows that the poor have the same desires as anyone else and choose their priorities accordingly.

collecting water from holes in the ground, Udaipur, India

(source unknown)

• The poor see themselves as having a significant amount of choice, and choose not to exercise it in the direction of spending more on food. The typical poor household in Udaipur could spend up to 30 percent more on food than it actually does, just based on what it spends on alcohol, tobacco, and festivals. Indeed, in most of the surveys the share spent on food is about the same for the poor and the extremely poor, suggesting that the extremely poor do not feel the need to purchase more calories. This conclusion echoes an old finding in the literature on nutrition: Even the extremely poor do not seem to be as hungry for additional calories as one might expect.
• Tap water and electricity are extremely rare among the poor.
• Many poor households have multiple occupations. They may operate their own one-man business, sometimes more than one, but do so with almost no productive assets. They also have jobs as laborers, often in agriculture. And they cultivate a piece of land they own. Yet, agriculture is not the mainstay of most of these households. Where do they find non-agricultural work? They migrate. The businesses they operate are very small, lacking economies of scale and without employment opportunities for people outside the family. That’s a vicious circle because it means that few people can find a job and are forced to start petty businesses themselves. This circle makes economies of scale very difficult.
• The poor tend not to become too specialized, which has its costs. As short-term migrants, they have little chance of learning their jobs better, ending up in a job that suits their specific talents or being promoted. Even the non-agricultural businesses that the poor operate typically require relatively little specific skills. The reason for this lack of specialization is probably risk spreading. If the weather is bad and crop yields are low, people can move to another occupation.
• The poor don’t save a lot, unsurprisingly. Some of it has to do with inadequate access to credit and insurance markets. Banks and insurers are unwilling to give access to the poor and saving at home is hard to do; it’s unsafe and the presence of money at home increases the temptation to spend (that’s true for all of us by the way).
• In 12 of the 13 countries in the sample, with the exception of Cote d’Ivoire, at least 50 percent of both boys and girls aged 7 to 12 in extremely poor households are in school. Schooling doesn’t take a large bite from the family budget of the poor because children in poor households typically attend public schools or other schools that do not charge a fee.

Related Articles

• Victorian poor records go online (bbc.co.uk)
• What about the pursuit of happiness? | Mukoma Wa Ngugi (guardian.co.uk)

Measuring Human Rights (25): Measuring Hunger

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First, and for those in doubt: hunger is a human rights violations (see article 25 of the Universal Declaration). Second, before we discuss ways to measure this violation, we have to know what it is that we want to measure. It’s surprisingly difficult to define hunger.

Definition of hunger

The word “hunger” in this context does not refer to the subjective sensation that we have when lunch is late. We’re talking here about a chronic lack of food or a sudden and catastrophic lack of food (as in the case of a famine). We measure a lack of food by measuring dietary energy deficiency, which in turn is computed based on average daily calorie intake. The FAO estimates that the average minimum energy requirement per person is 1800 kcal per day. The global average per capita daily calorie intake is currently about 2800 kcal. This average obviously masks extreme differences between the obese and the chronically undernourished.

The FAO minimum energy requirement per person of 1800 kcal is also an average. The minimum calorie need depends on many things: age, climate, health, height, occupation etc.

Usually, the concept of “hunger” as it is defined here is different from “malnutrition“. Hunger is a lack of food defined as a lack of calorie intake. Malnutrition is a lack of quality food, of micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals, and of a divers diet. Hence, people may have access to sufficient quantities of food and still be malnourished.

Hunger and famine are also different concepts. Hunger is a chronic and creeping lack of food, while a famine results from the sudden collapse of food stocks. A famine implies widespread starvation during a limited period. It can’t go on forever because it must stop when everyone has died or when food supplies are restored. Chronic hunger on the other hand can go on forever because it doesn’t imply widespread starvation. Of course, people do die of chronic hunger, and on a global level hunger kills more people than famines do. But whereas in the case of famine people die of starvation, the victims of chronic hunger usually don’t starve to death. When we say that hunger kills someone every 3.6 seconds we usually mean that this person dies from an infectious disease brought on by hunger. Hunger increases people’s vulnerability to diseases which are otherwise nonfatal (e.g. diarrhea, pneumonia etc.). In fact, most hunger related deaths do not occur during famines. Chronic hunger is much more deadly – it’s just not as noticeable as a famine. When and where famines occur, they are more deadly and catastrophic. But they occur, thank God, only exceptionally. Hunger on the other hand is a permanent fixture of the lives of millions and ubiquitous in many countries.

"dying child" by Jac Saorsa

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Measurement of hunger

Given this definition, how do we go about and measure the extent of chronic hunger? (The measurement of famine is a separate problem, discussed here). There are different possible methods:

• So-called food intake surveys (FIS) estimate dietary intake and try to relate this to energy needs determined by physical activity. Calorie intake below a minimum level means hunger. The problem here is that minimum calorie intake thresholds are somewhat arbitrary and do not always take people’s different calorie requirements into account. Even for a single individual, this threshold can vary over time (depending on the climate, the individual’s age, occupation and health etc.). Moreover, when trying to measure calorie intake, you’re faced with the problem of hunger due to imperfect absorption: it’s not because someone in a sample buys and consumes x number of calories that he or she actually absorbs those calories. The widespread incidence of diarrhea and other health problems often mean that only a fraction of calories eaten are absorbed by the body.
• In order to bypass this, some propose a measurement method based on revealed preferences. The greater the share of calories people receive from the cheapest foods available to them, the hungrier they are; and, conversely, the more they buy expensive sources of calories, the less hungry they are. Their choice of foods reveals whether they have enough calories. This method therefore eliminates the threshold and absorption problems.

Our approach derives from the fact that when a person is below their nutrition threshold, there is a large utility penalty due to the physical discomfort associated with the body’s physiological and biochemical reaction to insufficient nutrition. At this stage, the marginal utility of calories is extremely high, so a utility-maximizing consumer will largely choose foods that are the cheapest available source of calories, typically a staple like cassava, rice or wheat. However, once they have passed subsistence, the marginal utility of calories declines significantly and they will begin to substitute towards foods that are more expensive sources of calories but that have higher levels of non-nutritional attributes such as taste. Thus, though any individual’s actual subsistence threshold is unobservable, their choice to switch away from the cheapest source of calories reveals that their marginal utility of calories is low and that they have surpassed subsistence. Accordingly, the percent of calories consumed from the staple food source, or the staple calorie share (SCS), can be used as an indicator for nutritional sufficiency. (source, source)

• Still another method consists of measuring hunger’s physical effects on growth and thinness. Instead of measuring calorie intake, hunger or revealed preferences, you measure people’s length, their stunted growth and their body mass index. However, this is very approximative since length and weight may be determined by lots of factors, many of them unrelated to hunger.
• And finally there are subjective approaches. The WFP does surveys asking people how often they ate in the last week and what they ate, how often they skip meals, how far they are away from markets, if their hunger is temporary or chronic etc. Gallup does something similar.

More on hunger here. More data here. And more posts in this series here.

Economic Human Rights (38): A Silly Argument Against the Right to Food

The right to food (art. 25 of the Universal Declaration i.a.) doesn’t get a good press. Only a handful believe that it’s comparable in importance to rights such as free speech or freedom of religion. This disdain surprises me. And it’s not just that it shows a failure to understand the interdependence of rights – none of our rights make any sense on an empty stomach. If you know that 6 million children under the age of five die of hunger every year there is at least a prima facie reason – although not a sufficient reason, I admit – to claim that there should be a human right to food.

The counter argument goes as follows: if we grant people a right to food, they will stop working and just watch television all day while the government gives them food. That will destroy both the economy and people’s character.

I think that’s really silly. Let’s make an analogy with an uncontroversial right, the right to free movement. This right doesn’t mean that the government should “give people movement”. That doesn’t make sense. People claiming that right don’t ask for the government to move them. What they ask is

1. that the government doesn’t hinder their free movement (hence a legal prohibition on internal border controls, restricted zones etc.); and
2. that the government helps people to acquire the capability to move freely if they don’t have that capability (hence assistance to people with disabilities and the construction of public highways).

The same is true for the right to food. This right doesn’t tell the government to give people food. All it demands is that the government doesn’t take away people’s food or people’s ability to acquire food (as it did in this instance), and that it helps people acquire the ability to get food. The latter may imply temporary food provision (or giving cash for food) to those in dire need, but this provision is aimed at capacity building, and should stop when people’s capabilities are restored.

A closely related discussion is the one about positive and negative rights. See here.

Human Rights Video (24): Gender Discrimination

An interesting talk about gendercide, gender differences in child mortality and in literacy and education, human trafficking, maternal mortality etc.

More human rights videos are here.

The Causes of Poverty (52): Brain Dysfunctions Caused by Adversity Experienced by Children Under the Age of Two

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Children in orphanages, in poor quality day care centers, children of teenagers or children with one or two parents incarcerated often experience neglect, lack of stimuli, adversity and even abuse. Studies have shown that this kind of adversity, especially if it takes place during the first two years of life,

can damage the brain as surely as inhaling toxic substances or absorbing a blow to the head can. And after the age of two, much of that damage can be difficult to repair, even for children who go on to receive the nurturing they were denied in their early years. … For a long time, social science has known of correlations between childhood turmoil and all sorts of adult maladies that carry massive social and financial costs—mental illness, addiction, tendencies toward violence. … [Recent] science suggests that many of these problems have roots earlier than is commonly understood—especially during the first two years of life. … [A]dversity during this period affects the brain, down to the level of DNA. (source)

Early childhood adversity such as neglect, abuse or the stress produced by extreme poverty weakens and distorts the development of the brain and sets the body’s hormonal stress function on permanent high alert.

brain activity in institutionalized and non-institutionalized children

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Here are some examples of the ways in which early childhood adversity affects the brain in a lasting manner:

[A] baby who endures prolonged abuse or neglect is likely to end up with an enlarged amygdala: a part of the brain that helps generate the fear response. Some of the earliest and most important research establishing this process dates to the 1950s, when investigators observed that rats were better at solving problems if they got more nurturing at very young ages. … Subsequent research showed that persistent childhood stress also leads to significant physical problems, such as far higher rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. … Early adversity … can interfere with planning ability, cognitive flexibility, problems with memory, and all of those will correlate with diminished IQ. … One 2010 paper from Psychological Medicine concluded that “childhood adversities”—a category that includes abusive parenting and economic hardship—were associated with about one in five cases of “severely impairing” mental disorders and about one in four anxiety disorders in adulthood. (source)

So there is evidence of a causal connection between trouble in very early childhood and problems that occur later in life. Notwithstanding the fact that some affected children end up OK and that others may benefit from later interventions, the cited effects are often tenacious in later life. That means that preventing them requires concentrated action during those crucial first two years. Providing very young children with stable, responsive and nurturing relationships in the family, in school and in the neighborhood can prevent or reverse the effect of early childhood adversity, stress and neglect.

And the interesting part from our point of view is that the effects of early adversity are not limited to mental disorders and crime. These effects cause and perpetuate poverty. Hormonal and brain functions that are distorted by adversity and stress result in learning difficulties:

Children who fail to develop coping mechanisms struggle from the earliest days in school, because even the slightest provocations or setbacks destroy their focus and attention. They can’t sit still and read. They have trouble standing in line. They lash out at classmates or teachers. And these struggles, naturally, lead to other problems that perpetuate the cycle of poverty. All of this is to say that the science of early childhood may play a significant role in the dominant political question of our time: rising inequality. (source)

That means that anti-poverty measures should focus on very young children. Such measures have lifelong benefits for learning, behavior and health. Not only are such early measures more effective in the struggle against poverty than attempts to reverse damage later in life – they are probably also less costly.

More posts in this series are here.

What Are Human Rights? (33): Something More Than Goals

Jews demonstrate in Lodz, Poland, bearing banners "we demand the right to work", in protest against anti-Jewish laws prior to WWII

You can often hear the claim that economic rights such as the right to healthcare, food and work are not really rights but merely desirable goals. A first reply would be that all types of rights, not just economic rights, are also goals. Free speech is just as much a goal as healthcare, food and work. But not all goals are rights, so it’s reasonable to ask if economic rights are really rights. What is a right? It can be different things, but it should, minimally, impose a duty. A duty implies feasibility. Ought implies can. There’s no point imposing duties on people which they are unable to respect.

A typical objection against economic rights is that they impose precisely such duties, duties which are not and will not be feasible in many countries in the world. Imposing a right to healthcare, food and work in Somalia, for instance, is imposing an illusion. It’s just too expensive. Hence, because they impose impossible duties, economic rights can’t really be rights. They are merely goals.

Now, I did argue before that the relative expensiveness of economic rights compared to “freedom” rights is often very much exaggerated. Which is why Somalia and other countries have also failed to secure freedom rights successfully. Part of their lack of success is due to their unwillingness to leave people be – which they could at no expense – but another part is due to their unwillingness and inability to fund the institutions necessary to enforce people’s freedom. Yet, no one claims that these failures turn free speech into a mere goal or aspiration rather than a right.

Furthermore, the international treaties that impose respect for economic rights have taken the cost criticism into account. They often frame economic rights in terms of “progressive realization”. Countries don’t violate the treaties if they can show that they have taken all possible measures to ensure the progressive – as opposed to immediate – realization of economic rights.

If we turn rights into goals, we lose a lot. Goals are a lot weaker in terms of moral force than rights. Those who are without food can no longer demand that something is done, that they are the victims of an injustice, and that they have a right to food. All they can do is ask or beg that a certain social goal, one among probably thousands, is taken a bit more seriously.

Finally, is it really so farcical to impose duties that exceed people’s abilities to comply? Aren’t we doing that all the time? It’s common to view “telling the truth” as a moral duty, a very strong one even. And yet, we all know that this exceeds our abilities to comply. We lie all the time, and if you deny this, you’re lying. The best we can do, morally, is precisely “progressive realization”: trying to lie as little as we can, and less than we’re used to. The same progressive realization rescues economic rights as rights: rather than imposing a duty to realize the goal inherent in the rights, they impose a duty to try to realize that goal.

Read more on economic rights here, here and here. And something on the relative cost of freedom and dictatorship is here. More posts in this series here.

Human Rights Facts (66): Life Expectancy Across Social Groups in the U.S.

blood flow

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I’ve written before about some very significant health disparities across segments of the population of the U.S. (see here, here. here, here, here and here). Health disparities across racial, gender or income groups are a strong indication of injustice since most if not all such disparities have no basis in biology and must therefore have social or political causes. They lead to a shorter life and a lower quality of life for the average person in certain social groups. For example, this study shows that

the life expectancy gap between the 3.4 million high-risk urban black males and the 5.6 million Asian females was 20.7 years in 2001.

See also these graphs:

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The causes of disparities like these are other types of disparities:

• differences in health care access and utilization (through differences in health insurance and different access to good quality medical facilities)
• different homicide rates
• different HIV rates
• differences in nutritional behavior and food availability (see the concept of “food deserts”)
• different poverty rates
• etc.

More data on life expectancy here.

Human Rights Maps (156): Progress on the Millennium Development Goals

Here’s an overview of the countries that have progressed most in terms of the 1st, 4th and 5th Millennium Development Goals (respectively: reduce the number of people living on less that $1.25 a day, reduce under age 5 mortality rate and increase the number of births attended by skilled personnel):

(source, these are the countries that have improved by the largest margins compared to the initial measurement, regardless of their initial conditions or initial distance from the targets)

More on the MDGs here. More human rights maps here.

Human Rights Maps (153): Female Life Expectancy in the U.S.

Although national rates of life expectancy for American men and women have risen over the last two decades, women in many parts of the U.S. are now living less long than 25 years ago:

(source, click image to enlarge)

This may be a symptom of bad lifestyles or unhealthy habits, but it may also be caused by deficient healthcare, poverty, a lack of education, gender discrimination etc., in which case it becomes a human rights issue (living standard, health and education are human rights).

This is the same map for men:

(source, click image to enlarge)

Only in very few places has life expectancy for men decreased. The fact that the same isn’t true for women indicates that there’s something more going on than just lifestyles and the habit choices. After all, women’s lifestyles aren’t particularly more self-destructive than men’s.

More maps on life expectancy and health. More human rights maps.

Human Rights Video (22): Landmines

WARNING: this video is disturbing, and meant to be.

(imagine if land mines were a part of your everyday)

From an advocacy standpoint, this is probably way over the top. Some would call it badvertising and, indeed, I don’t see the need to shock people in this way in order to raise consciousness. More on landmines here. More human rights videos here.

Related Articles

• Denmark against landmines : Picnic gone wrong [Video] (scaryideas.com)
• Picnic gone wrong (osocio.org)
• U.S. still undecided on joining landmines treaty (reuters.com)

Limiting Free Speech (45): Selling Violent Video Games to Children

(source)

A recent US Supreme Court ruling invalidated a California law that banned the sale of certain violent video games to children on the grounds that the law violated freedom of speech. The controversy is an old one, and goes roughly as follows. Proponents of laws banning violent media – especially the sale of violent media to children – point to different studies arguing that violence in media promotes violence in real life and that children in particular are at risk of becoming violent adults. Since people have a right to be protected against violence and children have a right not to suffer the psychological harm that purportedly comes from the consumption of violent games, we have here a case of rights conflicting with each other: on the one hand the free speech rights of the makers and sellers of games, and on the other hand the security rights of the potential victims of violent behavior provoked by the consumption of violent games, as well as the mental health rights of the consumers of those games. Hence, one of those rights should give way to the other rights.

Proponents of restrictions of free speech in this case argue that a prohibition of the sale of violent games to children is the best option since the speech value of a violent video game is small, and since producers of such games still have the freedom of “artistic expression” because they can still sell to adults. The cost of limiting free speech in this case is small compared to the gains in terms of physical security and psychological health. And there are precedents such as movie ratings.

The opponents of limitations on free speech can also point to studies showing the absence of an effect on real life violence or even the opposite effect – the so-called “pressure valve theory“. They can also use the slippery slope argument and claim that the sale of many classical works of fiction should then also be prohibited on the same grounds, since they also contain scenes of violence.

The US Supreme court sided with the opponents, unsurprisingly given the near absolutism of free speech protection in the US (only a couple of exceptions to free speech are recognized in US jurisprudence, and expression of violence isn’t one of them).

While I personally find US free speech jurisprudence difficult to accept and generally hypocritical – why can obscene material be censored but not violent material? – I think in this case the SCOTUS decision is probably right. The psychological evidence does not, as far as I can tell, clearly show an effect of media violence on real life violence, and even if there is a small effect, a general prohibition on violence in media probably goes too far, as does a general prohibition on the sale of media containing violence. Even a prohibition on the sale of such material to children is probably too much, even given the fact that children are more impressionable. Violence has many causes, and the “pressure valve” theory has some intuitive appeal (also in the case of pornography by the way). A rating system, allowing parents to do their job, is probably better.

Bonus cartoon:

 

(source)

More about media violence and free speech here. More posts in this series here.

Children’s Rights (13): Minimum Age of Marriage Laws Reduce Incidence of Child Marriage

(source)

In many countries, it’s customary for girls to marry at a very young age, voluntarily or not. This practice is detrimental to the human rights of women, as I argued before.

In the developing world, more than one third of women aged 20 to 24 report that they were married or in a union by the age of 18. (source)

This practice is often legally entrenched:

In 50 countries, the minimum legal age of marriage is lower for females. (source)

However, it seems that the law can also work the other way:

(source, click image to enlarge)

Or perhaps the causation goes the other way: countries where customs are against early marriage also adopt laws stipulating a high minimum marriage age. In general, we shouldn’t be too optimistic about the power of legislation.

More on child marriage here. More human rights facts here.

Human Rights Ads (66): Organ Donation

organ donation advert

(source unknown)

A slightly creepy yet also very moving advert encouraging people to donate their organs after death. More on the human rights implications of organ shortages and – in particular – organ trade is here, here, here and here. More human rights ads are here.

Moral Dilemma (20): Knowing the Date You’ll Die

Assume your doctor finds out that you, a 12 year old child, have a genetic defect which will inexorably lead to your dead by the age of 30. There’s no cure. He has the choice of telling you this or keeping silent. If he keeps silent, you will live a couple of decades unaware of your fate, and untroubled by it. If he speaks, you may suffer anguish throughout your life, but perhaps you may live your life to the full during the years that you have and plan your life accordingly.

More moral dilemma’s here.

The Ethics of Human Rights (47): What’s So Funny About Paternalism?

In general, those who promote human rights will not be tempted to engage in paternalistic policies. That’s because human rights are about protecting people against each other, not about protecting people against themselves. And one of the foundations of human rights is the moral value of personal autonomy: people have a right to organize their lives according to their own plans and reasons, free from the influence and manipulation of others, even if others believe they are mistaken or self-destructive. Personal autonomy in this sense of the word is the basis of rights such as the right to privacy, property, political participation etc.

So, paternalism can be seen as detrimental to human rights. On the other hand, all societies are to some extent paternalistic, with the apparent consent of all. So what’s the deal? Let’s go through this topic in a systematic way, starting with some definitions, typologies and proposed justifications of paternalism, in order to end up with a clearer vision about paternalism’s temptations, dangers and limits.

Definition of paternalism

Paternalism is

• interference
• usually by the government
• with an agent’s strictly self-regarding actions
• and against the will of the agent.

It’s the use of coercion, force or incentives, against the initial will of the agent, with the purpose of imposing or preventing a certain type of action or lifestyle that has, respectively, positive or negative consequences for the agent and that does not harm or benefit a third party.

The purpose of paternalism is therefore to make the agent who is the object of paternalistic force, better off. She’s better off because she is forced, by the paternalist, to do good things to herself or to abstain from doing harm to herself.

Types of paternalism

This definition allows us to distinguish two types of paternalism: positive and negative (these qualifiers do not imply value judgments):

• positive paternalism means forcing people to benefit themselves
• negative paternalism means forcing people not to harm themselves.

The latter is much more common, I believe. Examples are anti-drug legislation, laws forcing people to wear seat belts or crash helmets etc. An example of the former are laws requiring people to contribute to a pension fund (although that case may not be strictly self-regarding since part of the motivation for such laws is the protection, not only of the future pensioner, but of his or her descendants or society in general).

Paternalism should therefore be distinguished from other types of coercion that aim at preventing people from harming others or forcing people to benefit others (such as laws against murder or laws imposing taxation respectively). Such non-paternalistic types of coercion focus on other-regarding consequences, whereas paternalistic coercion focuses on self-regarding consequences. Paternalism wants to limit the harm people’s actual or possible voluntary actions can do to themselves, and maximize the benefits that people’s possible but not voluntarily chosen actions can produce for themselves.

Paternalists are therefore “do-gooders” who want to maximize people’s utility, benefits, happiness, wellbeing etc. and who believe that this requires more than mutual protection.

(Other typologies of paternalism are, of course, possible: a soft form of paternalism would not intervene if people consciously and with full knowledge harm themselves, and only when self-harm results from lack of information; or would only intervene using incentives or “nudges” rather than coercion; hard paternalism would discount knowledge and intervene anyway; paternalism may be limited to the means people choose for their ends, or may also include these ends etc.).

Justifications of paternalism

Paternalists offer different reasons why they think that people, in some cases, should be prevented from engaging or forced to engage in certain actions.

• As stated a moment ago, there may be a lack of knowledge on the part of the agent forcing the agent to unwittingly harm herself or fail to benefit herself. And this can be a lack of knowledge of different kinds:
  • First, the agent may not be aware of the harmful self-regarding consequences of a chosen or intended action, or may not be aware of the beneficial self-regarding consequences of an unchosen and unwanted action. In such cases, there are two possibilities. Either the simple delivery of information regarding the consequences – for example through education or communication – is enough to convince the agent to avoid harmful action or to choose beneficial action, and then no paternalistic action is necessary. Or this is not enough and paternalistic action is necessary. An example of the latter can be marijuana: according to some paternalists, the consequences of marijuana use are harmful, but this “information” doesn’t seem to register with users.
  • The absence of knowledge may be a deeper problem. The agent may not be aware of her true interests. Example: a terminally ill patient who wants to die may not be aware that her true interest – according to some – is respecting God’s will and God’s rules against suicide.
• In many cases, people justify paternalism not because there’s a lack of knowledge, but because there’s a lack of “character” on the part of the agent. The agent may know very well what is and is not in her interest and what actions have beneficial or harmful consequences, but she just can’t bring herself to engage in or avoid those actions. There’s clarity about her interests and about consequences, but not the will, the courage, perseverance etc. to act correctly.

Most cases of paternalism, I guess, are of the first kind, where it is assumed that there’s a lack of continuous knowledge and a lack of conscious and lasting awareness of the consequences of certain actions, and that someone else, e.g. the state, knows better.

Plato

Hence, paternalism deserves its name. Paternalists assume – much like Plato – that society is divided into two groups of people, the “fathers” and the “children”, those who know better and are more rational, and those who don’t know and can’t be counted on to take their lives into their own hands. However, paternalism goes beyond the father-child metaphor because it believes that the “children” will never fully grow up: knowledge about consequences acquired through information and education, knowledge about which actions are or are not in the best interests of people, or knowledge about how people can act to best serve their true interests will often not be enough to act in a certain way. Apart from knowledge, character can be lacking, and that’s a fault that is much more difficult to correct without continuous paternalistic force.

The temptation of paternalism

John Stuart Mill

So, all that sounds pretty awful, and yet all or most societies engage in some kind of paternalism without much public opposition. The examples given above are quite common. And indeed, some forms of paternalism are quite harmless and difficult to avoid. John Stuart Mill cites the case of a bridge that is about to collapse. The circumstances are such that only engineers are in a position to know this. Regular drivers don’t and can’t know the consequences of their actions – in this case driving across the bridge – and should therefore be prevented from acting by those who know better. This isn’t usually called paternalism, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear difference between this case and real cases of paternalism, such as laws forcing people to wear crash helmets (assuming that the reason why people don’t wear helmets is an insufficient awareness of the possible consequences), or moral rules dictating that we should try to convince our friends not to commit suicide if they are so inclined.

So, paternalism is there to stay. I don’t think there are many “hard anti-paternalists” around. Hence, as is often the case on this blog, we are faced with value pluralism and two contradicting values: in some cases it’s obviously good to protect people against themselves, but at the same time it is generally correct to respect people’s autonomy, their self-determination and their right to make their own decisions and to live according to their own reasons and motives, free from external forces.

Where’s the trade-off? I would say that the burden of proof is on those wishing to limit people’s autonomy, given the general importance of autonomy. Their case can made stronger when, for example, there’s absolutely no doubt that a certain course of action will produce serious harm to the agent. Otherwise the case for paternalistic coercion is less strong and the best we can do is simply warn people of the possible consequences. Their case can also be made stronger when medical opinion about an agent’s neurological or psychological disorders is unanimous.

The dangers of paternalism

The burden of proof is on paternalists because of the risks inherent in paternalism. We also tend to overestimate the effectiveness of paternalism. Generally, individuals are the best judges of their own needs and wants and of the means to realize them. It’s not obvious that a paternalistic class of “fathers” can have better knowledge, given the vast number of people, options and risks involved. And even if individuals make mistakes, the harm done by forcing them into a system in which they are treated like children may be greater than the harm they do to themselves when left alone. Most people value the freedom to decide for themselves and the value of this freedom can sometimes compensate the cost of self-inflicted harm. It’s also likely that mistakes make people better judges.

Does that mean that people should have the freedom to damn themselves? In most cases, yes, if that’s someone’s free and voluntary choice, made in the light of all the information available and accessible to her.

More about paternalism here. More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• Paternalism and Australia’s Aborigines (beliefnet.com)
• Jeremy Laurance: We may not like it, but we still need to be told what’s good for us (independent.co.uk)
• What Price Paternalism? (theatlantic.com)
• More on the paternalistic nature of performance measurement (medrants.com)

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (19): Psychological Reactions to the Threat of Disease

microscope

(source)

There sure are many reasons why countries become or fail to become democracies. In this blog series I’ve mentioned climate, geography, inequality, external triggers, prosperity, religion, resources, education etc. An original approach to this question looks at psychological reactions to the threat of disease:

Conventional explanations for a country’s political system would draw on its history, economy and culture. Randy Thornhill from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, however, thinks it might be determined by the threat of disease in a region. This triggers psychological biases, which originally evolved to prevent illness spreading, that also hinder the emergence of democratic ideals. (source)

The logic is that people develop psychological reactions – call them biases – which they need to protect themselves against infectious diseases, and these reactions in turn make it difficult to adopt democracy, individualism and an attitude of criticism of authority.

The starting point for Thornhill and Fincher’s thinking is a basic human survival instinct: the desire to avoid illness. In a region where disease is rife, they argue, fear of contagion may cause people to avoid outsiders, who may be carrying a strain of infection to which they have no immunity. Such a mindset would tend to make a community as a whole xenophobic, and might also discourage interaction between the various groups within a society – the social classes, for instance – to prevent unnecessary contact that might spread disease.

What is more, Thornhill and Fincher argue, it could encourage people to conform to social norms and to respect authority, since adventurous behaviour may flout rules of conduct set in place to prevent contamination. Taken together, these attitudes would discourage the rich and influential from sharing their wealth and power with those around them, and inhibit the rest of the population from going against the status quo and questioning the authority of those above them. This is clearly not a situation conducive to democracy. (source, source)

What is, initially useful for public health, becomes detrimental for self-government:

[S]pecific behavioural manifestations of collectivism (e.g. ethnocentrism, conformity) can inhibit the transmission of pathogens; and so we hypothesize that collectivism (compared with individualism) will more often characterize cultures in regions that have historically had higher prevalence of pathogens. Drawing on epidemiological data and the findings of worldwide cross-national surveys of individualism/collectivism, our results support this hypothesis: the regional prevalence of pathogens has a strong positive correlation with cultural indicators of collectivism and a strong negative correlation with individualism. (source)

(source, dots represent countries)

Human Rights Ads (62): Landmine Stickers

(source, click image to enlarge)

These landmine-stickers with self-adhesive topsides are placed on the floor and are invisible until they stick to your feet. While removing them, people discover the landmine-picture on the bottom side and are informed that in many other countries they would have been mutilated at this moment.

More on landmines here and here. More human rights ads here.

Human Rights Video (21): The Right to Water

A beautiful video about the scourge of undrinkable water:

More on the right to water here, here and here. More human rights videos here.

Human Rights Ads (60): HIV/AIDS Awareness

(source)

(source)

More on HIV/AIDS as a human rights issue here.

Statistical Jokes (27): Averages

Patient: “Will I survive this risky operation?”

Surgeon: “Yes, I’m absolutely sure that you will survive the operation.”

Patient: “How can you be so sure?”

Surgeon: “9 out of 10 patients die in this operation, and yesterday died my ninth patient.”

More statistical jokes here.

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (23): Privacy, Justifications and Objections

Charlie Brown having some privacy

(source)

The right to privacy has become increasingly important and contested. Here are just a few examples of areas in which violations of privacy have become more common over the last decades:

• Public safety: many governments claim that the war on terror requires the following limitations of the right to privacy (just as it requires limitations of other rights):
  • wiretapping
  • CCTV surveillance
  • data mining
  • airport security checks
  • drone monitoring
• Medicine:
  • the debate on abortion is now commonly framed as a privacy issue
  • there’s also the issue of genetic patenting
  • there’s mandatory drugs testing
• Employment:
  • background checks
  • monitoring of workers’ activities, either for safety reasons or for productivity reasons
• Transportation and road safety:
  • GPS tracking
  • Google Streetview
• Criminal justice:
  • sex offender registers
  • satellite tracking for criminals as an alternative to incarceration
• Commerce: sales tracking using fidelity cards or credit cards
• Etc.

Since it’s always good to cite the Universal Declaration when talking about human rights, here’s the article about privacy (#12):

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Types of privacy

Privacy is what is called a cluster concept: it covers many different things, things which may seem unrelated at first sight. So, before I go on, here’s a short and tentative typology of different kinds of “privacies” (I’ll mention later what they have in common):

• Domestic privacy. People have a right to remain secluded and alone in their homes, to keep what happens in their homes and houses to themselves, and to repel intrusion. That’s mostly what is protected by the Fourth Amendment in the US. Issues related to obscenity or pornography laws for example also fall under this type of privacy.
• Personal privacy. People have a right to keep their thoughts, opinions, or feelings to themselves. The secrecy of postal communication for example falls under this type, as does the secret ballot.
• Physical (or intimate) privacy. People have a right not to expose their bodies, as well as a right to repel physical intrusion into their bodies. Abortion and some security checks belong here.
• Informational privacy. People have a right to control what happens to information about themselves (or their families), and to limit involuntary distribution or disclosure of such information. Information here means facts, whether embarrassing or not, rather than opinions. The latter are part of libel law. Information about sexual orientation or salaries is an example of informational privacy.
• Relational privacy. People have a right to keep some of the details about their relationships to themselves. This includes whom they have what type of sexual intercourse with. Sodomy laws violate this kind of privacy, as do laws regulating the use of contraceptives. People also have a right to decide without interference on the type of relationship that suites them best. This covers laws regulating interracial marriages, same-sex marriages etc.

(There’s also the concept of private property, but I think this can be separated from privacy issues, although private property of a home is obviously a necessary condition for domestic privacy, for example).

(source, source, work by Will Varner)

All these types of privacy have something in common: they are all about independence. Privacy protects an individual’s interest in making independent decisions about her life, family, home, lifestyle, relationships, behavior and communication. All these types of privacy are also about the restriction of access or intrusion. Privacy gives an individual the right to deny access or intrusion by others, more specifically access to or intrusion in her body, her home, her relationships, her mind and certain facts about her life. It’s a right to be let alone.

Justification of privacy

Privacy is justified because it restricts access. Some restrictions of access are necessary for personal identity. There is no “I”, no person, no individual without a border between me and the rest of the world. Such a border is an absolute requirement for the basic human need of personhood and individuality. If people have unlimited access to each other, then there simply won’t be any separate people left. People understood as separate entities require some level of privacy protection. The exact level of privacy and the justified intrusions into people’s private lives are not yet determined by this argument, but the need for some level of privacy and some limitations of intrusions is clear. Other justifications of privacy could be based on the interest people have in intimacy, close personal relationships etc. It’s clear that a world without privacy or even without strong privacy rights would be a horrible world indeed.

Objections to privacy

Some argue that there’s nothing special about privacy and that the concept doesn’t merit an independent existence, let alone legal protection. The many different interests protected by privacy can indeed be protected by other means, such as a right to private property, liberty, bodily security and integrity, or independence.

However, I’m not sure that this is true for all the interests protected by a right to privacy. And an independent notion of privacy gives at least an added protection, partly because of the strong roots of the notion in common language and belief.

Karl Marx

Some go even a step further and consider privacy to be detrimental rather than merely superfluous. Marx, for example, viewed privacy as a symptom of an atomized and selfish society, intent on protecting the material self-interest of the haves faced with a possible revolt of the have-nots.

Some feminists as well have forcefully argued that privacy is detrimental to women because of its use as a shield to protect male domination, superiority and abuse. However, it’s not because a right can be abused that it loses all meaning. There wouldn’t be any rights left if that were the case. The challenge is to avoid intrusion in people’s private lives that go too far, while at the same time allowing intrusion that counters abusive private actions. The right to privacy is therefore not an absolute right. But it is a right, and feminists should remember that intrusions into the private sphere can also be detrimental to women (e.g. abortion legislation, forced sterilization etc.).

More here and here.

Related Articles

• The Fourth Amendment: It Has Got to be About More than Privacy (reason.com)
• Q&A: How Do You Define ‘Privacy Harm’? (blogs.wsj.com)

The Causes of Poverty (41): Racism

Poverty in Baltimore

There’s a clear discrepancy between poverty rates for blacks and whites in the U.S. (as between races in many other countries):

The question is to what extent racism is to blame. I mentioned here, here and here that some of the irrational and self-destructive behavior of a lot of poor people causes many to believe that the poor are themselves to blame for their poverty and that one shouldn’t look for external reasons such as racism.

If you finish high school and keep a job without having children before marriage, you will almost certainly not be poor. Period. I have repeatedly felt the air go out of the room upon putting this to black audiences. No one of any political stripe can deny it. It is human truth on view. In 2004, the poverty rate among blacks who followed that formula was less than 6 percent, as opposed to the overall rate of 24.7 percent. Even after hearing the earnest musings about employers who are less interested in people with names like Tomika, no one can gainsay the simple truth of that advice. Crucially, neither bigotry nor even structural racism can explain why an individual does not live up to it. (source)

Opinions like this are very common:

But are these opinions correct? Is it true that “neither bigotry nor even structural racism” can explain why an individual does not make a few simple choices that will drastically improve her life?

At first sight, it does seem that a few simply rational decisions about life will allow you to escape or avoid poverty. But on closer inspection that’s just begging the question: if things are so simple, why don’t people make those choices? Hell, it’s so simple that it should be obvious even to the stupidest among the poor! But if it’s not stupidity that causes people to fail to take the advice of finishing high school and not having children early, and not bigotry or racism, then what?

[The] insistence that the failure of so many blacks to avoid the perils that come with not finishing high school and getting pregnant before marriage cannot be explained by structure or bigotry is too outrageous to let pass with no reply. In fact they can be easily explained by structure. …

The school systems in black neighborhoods are underfunded and undeniably worse on average than those in white neighborhoods.  The quality of the school, its teachers and leadership has a direct influence on graduation rates.  Sex ed and access to contraceptives are also far worse in black communities.  The public health failures come well before this for many black youth.  The failure to provide adequate health care and nutrition to black adolescents has been linked to the behavioral and learning disabilities so prevalent in black schools.  The diagnosis of a learning disability is one of the biggest predictors of eventually dropping out of school, particularly in poor urban schools. (source)

And having more trouble finding a job because you’re name sounds black obviously has an impact on your prosperity, also for your children. And growing up in a poor family has consequences for your adult prosperity. When we look at incarceration rates by race, and assume – wrongly – that there’s no racism in play, what do you think it does to a child having to grow up without a father?

This means that there’s one less parent to earn an income, one less parent to instill the sort of discipline all children need to graduate school and avoid unplanned pregnancies.  Even if the incarceration only lasts briefly, it still means that once the parent is out of jail he or she will find it much harder find employment. (source)

More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• “Depressing Because It Is So Persuasive” Ctd (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• “Depressing Because It Is So Persuasive” (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Those Who Broke it Can’t Always Fix It (theatlantic.com)
• “”Race, Wrongs, And Remedies”" and related posts (advicegoddess.com)
• Letters: The Causes of Poverty, and the Cures (nytimes.com)

Measuring Human Rights (16): The Right to Healthcare

health check in school

(There’s a more theoretical post here about the reasons why we should call health care a human right. But even if you think those are bad reasons, you may find the following useful).

The right to health care is one of the most difficult rights to measure. You can either try to measure people’s health directly and assume that good health means good health care, or you can measure the provision of health care and assume that there will be good health with a good health care system. Doing the latter means, for example:

• measuring the number of health workers per capita for countries
• measuring the quality of hospitals
• measuring health care spending by governments
• measuring the availability and affordability of health care
• measuring the availability and affordability of health insurance
• etc.

Doing the former means:

• measuring life expectancy
• measuring infant mortality
• measuring maternal mortality
• measuring calorie intake
• measuring the incidence of certain diseases
• measuring the survival rates for certain diseases
• etc.

Needless to say that every single one of these measurements is fraught with problems, although some more so than others. Even if you’re able to have a pretty good measurement for a single indicator for a single country, it may be difficult to compare the measurement across countries. For example, health insurance is organized in so many different ways that it may be impossible to compare the level of insurance across different countries.

But let’s focus on another measure. Life expectancy is often used as a proxy for health. And indeed, when people live longer, on average, we can reasonably assume that they are healthier and that their health care system is better. It’s also something that is relatively easy to measure, compared to other indicators, since even developing countries usually have reasonably good data based on birth and death certificates. And yet, I say “relatively” because there are some conceptual and definitional problems:

• Exceptional events such as a natural disasters or a war can drag down life expectancy numbers, but those events need not influence health in general or the quality of health care.
• Wealthy countries may have more deaths from car accidents than poorer countries, simply because they have more cars. This will pull their relative life expectancy down somewhat, given that younger people are more likely to die in car accidents. And if you use life expectancy to measure health you’ll get a smaller health gap compared to poorer countries than is the case in reality (at least if life expectancy is not corrected for this and if it’s not supplemented with other health indicators).
• How are miscarriages counted? If they are counted as child mortality, they drag down life expectancy rates compared to countries where they are not counted.
• What about countries that have more homicides? Or suicides? Although the latter should arguably count since suicides are often caused by bad mental health. If a country’s life expectancy rate is pulled down by high suicide rates, life expectancy rates are still a good indicator of health and of the quality of health care, assuming that health care can reduce suicide rates and remove, to some extent, the underlying health causes of suicide. However, homicides are different: a country with a very good health care system, a very high level of health and a high murder rate can have its health rating pulled down artificially when only life expectancy is used to measure health.
• Differences in diet and other types of risky behavior should also be excluded when comparing health and life expectancy across countries. It’s wellknown, for instance, that obesity is more of a problem in the U.S. than in many countries that are otherwise comparable to it. Obesity drags down life expectancy and reduces the average level of health, so life expectancy rates which are not corrected for obesity rates are still a good measure for health, but they are not a good measure for the quality of the U.S. health care system. If you want to use life expectancy rates to compare the quality of health care systems you’ll have to correct for obesity rates and perhaps for other types of risky behavior such as smoking or the absence of exercise. Maybe the U.S. health care system, even though it “produces” somewhat lower life expectancy rates than in comparable countries, is actually better than in other countries, yet still not good enough to offset the detrimental effects of high average obesity.

Hence, uncorrected life expectancy rates may not be such a good indicator of national health and of the quality of a national health care system. If we return to the case of the U.S., some of this may explain the strange fact that this country spends a lot more on health and yet has somewhat lower life expectancy rates than comparable countries:

(click image to enlarge)

Or maybe this discrepancy is caused by a combination of some misuse and waste at the spending side – more spending on health doesn’t necessarily result in better health – and some problems or peculiarities with the measurement of life expectancy. Let’s focus on the latter. As stated above, some cultural elements of American society, such as obesity, pull down life expectancy and worsen health outcomes. But there are other peculiarities that also pull down life expectancy, and that have nothing to do with health. I’m thinking of course of the relatively high levels of violence in the U.S. (see here for example). Death by assault is 5 to 10 times higher in the U.S. than in comparable countries (although those numbers tend to go down with the passing of time). This affects younger people more than older people, and when more young people die, life expectancy rates drop sharper than when more old people die.

However, even if you correct U.S. life expectancy rates for this, the rates don’t move up a lot (see here). The reason is that the numbers of deaths caused by homicide pale in comparison to other causes. Obesity levels, for instance, are a more important cause. But correcting life expectancy rates for obesity levels doesn’t seem appropriate, because we want to measure health. If you leave out all reasons for bad health from life expectancy statistics, your life expectancy rates go up, but your average health doesn’t. Obesity isn’t the same as homicide. Correcting life expectancy statistics for non-health related deaths such as homicide makes them a better indicator of health. Removing deaths from obesity doesn’t. If you have life expectancy rates without obesity, they may be a fairer judgment of the health care system but not a fairer judgment of health: a health care system in a country with a lot of obesity may be equally good as the one in another country and yet result in lower life expectancy. The former country does not necessarily have lower life expectancy because of its underperforming health care system – we assumed it’s of the same quality as elsewhere – but because of its culture of obesity.

However, if you really want to judge health care systems, you could argue that countries plagued by obesity should have a better quality system than other countries. They need a better quality system to fight the consequences of obesity and achieve similar life expectancy rates as other countries that don’t need to spend so much to fight obesity. So, life expectancy is then reinstituted as a good measure of health.

More on health, health care, and life expectancy. More posts in this series.

The Environment and Human Rights (5): Exporting Without Remorse: How Canada is Exporting Toxins to the 3rd World

[This is a post by guest writer Eric Stevenson, a health and safety advocate who resides in the Southeastern US].

Jeffrey Mine

Canada is well-known for its freshwater, its food, its winter sports, and its free health care system.  Its people have earned reputations as earnest, kind, hard workers and as a whole it is seen as a peaceful and generous nation. But recently the public’s opinion of Canada has been changing, and for unbelievable reasons.

Asbestos, Quebec is the home of Canada’s last and largest chrysotile mine. Chrysotile is a form of asbestos found in the earth and used in building materials, form drywall to ship parts.  The Jeffrey Mine is the world’s largest asbestos mine and has commercially exported nearly 90% of the world’s asbestos. Asbestos was at one time considered a completely harmless material. It is fire-retardant, resists wear and rusting, and is relatively inexpensive. Yet for decades, over 50 countries have banned asbestos from commercial and residential use.  Studies prove that asbestos is an aggressive carcinogen. When asbestos is disturbed, its fibers are released into the air and inhaled and ingested by workers and those living with the toxic material.

Inhaling or ingesting asbestos results in a deadly cancer called mesothelioma. Buildups of asbestos fibers collect in the lining of the lungs or stomach and extended exposure to the material greatly increases the risk of mesothelioma. Mesothelioma symptoms include coughing and shortness of breath and are often dormant for 20-50 years. This means that factory workers in the Jeffrey Mine, their family members who are at risk for secondhand exposure, and those to whom the asbestos will be sold may not realize that they have developed the cancer for several years. This allows the cancer to metastasize without diagnosis or treatment. Mesothelioma life expectancy ranges from only 3 months to a year. About 98% of those diagnosed with mesothelioma die shortly afterwards.

asbestos in India

Though Canada is among the countries that have strict asbestos regulations in place, it insists that exporting the mineral will not harm those exposed to its carcinogenic effects. Yet the World Health Organization reports that approximately 107,000 people die from asbestos-related diseases every year. The investors of the Jeffrey Mine project are determined to proceed with the unearthing of what they believe to be the largest asbestos deposit in the world. Though many Canadians disagree with the decision to export deadly toxins, those intending to buy Jeffrey Mine plan to sell asbestos to countries that have less strict or a complete lack of asbestos laws and regulations. Thus, while Canada spends millions to rid its schools and homes of asbestos, investors hope to fill schools and homes of others with it.

The potential factory owners insist that they will use asbestos-safe gear, ventilation, showers, and filters in their factory and, according to an AOL news report, they plan to provide these amenities so that workers will not carry the fibers home to their spouses and children, thus contaminating them as well. Such precautions would be unnecessary if the asbestos being mined was truly considered harmless.

Canada has its eye on its economic future, but refuses to consider the well-being of workers and families around the world. The dangers of asbestos and symptoms of mesothelioma have been widespread knowledge and the use of the product has been banned in many countries since the 1970’s. Exporting it to others simply to make a profit is not only bad business, it’s downright unethical and must be recognized as such.

Human Rights Maps (120): Spending on Health Care and Number of Doctors Per Capita

how much each country spends on healthcare per head of the population

(source, click image to enlarge)

doctors per 100,000 people

doctors per 100,000 people

(source)

More on the right to healthcare is here. More data on health are here. More human rights maps are here.

Human Rights Nonsense (23): Abortion = Anti-Black Genocide

In this photo made Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010, an anti-abortion billboard is shown in Atlanta. The eyebrow-raising ads featuring a young black child are an effort by the anti-abortion movement to use race to rally support within the black community. The reaction from black leaders has been mixed, but the "Too Many Aborted" campaign, which so far is unique to only Georgia, is drawing support from other anti-abortion groups across the country. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

(source)

Pro-life activists have propagated the narrative that the relatively free abortion rules in the U.S. are somehow a conspiracy to eliminate African-Americans. The organization that funded the billboard depicted above states that after the civil rights era, racists went “underground,” and that today “abortion is the tool they use to stealthily target blacks for extermination”; ” the black community is being targeted by abortionists for the purpose of ethnic cleansing” etc. (source).

In the U.S., black women do in fact have more abortions, but it’s a mighty leap to suggest that this should be explained by a genocidal conspiracy. And even if we would agree that there is a conspiracy at work, it’s an awfully unsuccessful one: fertility rates among black women remain higher than the national average and have inched up in recent years (source).

One piece of “evidence” for the conspiracy thesis is the location of abortion clinics: most are supposedly strategically located in black neighborhoods. However, that claim is incorrect.

It’s odd that those who are alleging racism are the ones being racist here: the conspiracy theory only holds if black women are either callous about their unborn children, or malleable tools in the hands of racist and coercive abortion doctors.

Also odd is the fact that most pro-lifers don’t seem all that worried about other, perhaps more real threats to black children – gun violence, incarceration rates and poverty – or about the general effects of racism on life prospects. If you want to worry about discrimination, racism or genocide, there’s lots of other places where you’ll have no difficulty finding it. And if you want to worry about abortion, maybe it’s good to focus on contraception, sex education, poverty and family stability instead of leaping to the most extreme and unlikely explanations. But perhaps you’re not interested in what you want to explain and only in how you explain it.

By the way, there’s a related and far more serious problem: sex-selective abortion, rather than race selective. But not in the US, fortunately. If you’re looking for the real abortion scandal, there you have it.

More on abortion. More human rights nonsense.

(image source)

Related Articles

• What A Horrible Doctor Can Teach Us About Abortion In America [Roe Vs. World] (jezebel.com)
• Anti-abortion push gains momentum (politico.com)
• Abortion foes upbeat; see chance for tougher curbs (sfgate.com)

Human Rights Maps (115): Legalization of Euthanasia

This is the status dd. 2009:

(source, click image to enlarge)

I guess “passive euthanasia” here means stopping life support and possibly other ways of letting people die without active intervention that makes them die. If you have more up-to-date information, let me know.

More on euthanasia and assisted suicide. More on self-determination, self-ownership and autonomy. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• Most Quebecers back legal euthanasia: poll (cbc.ca)
• Dead girl’s dad ‘asked about euthanasia’ (news.theage.com.au)
• Euthanasia wins 75% support (theage.com.au)

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (23): Unconscious Bias

No matter how egalitarian, unbiased and unprejudiced we claim to be and believe to be, underneath it all many of us are quite different.

If you ask people whether men and women should be paid the same for doing the same work, everyone says yes. But if you ask volunteers how much a storekeeper who runs a hardware store ought to earn and how much a storekeeper who sells antique china ought to earn, you will see that the work of the storekeeper whom volunteers unconsciously believe to be a man is valued more highly than the work of the storekeeper whom volunteers unconsciously assume is a woman. If you ask physicians whether all patients should be treated equally regardless of race, everyone says yes. But if you ask doctors how they will treat patients with chest pains who are named Michael Smith and Tyrone Smith, the doctors tend to be less aggressive in treating the patient with the black-sounding name. Such disparities in treatment are not predicted by the conscious attitudes that doctors profess, but by their unconscious attitudes—their hidden brains. (source)

And even if most of our actions are guided by our conscious beliefs, some will be caused by unconscious prejudice, in which case we’ll have identified a cause of discrimination, a cause that will be very hard to correct.

More on the related topic of unconscious discrimination is here. More about prejudice here, and about bias here.

Related Articles

• Human Rights Facts (201): Implicit Racism in Criminal Justice (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Finding your inner bigot. (slate.com)
• Dreaming, Racism and the Unconscious (psychologytoday.com)
• The unconscious expert (mindhacks.com)

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (59): World’s Youngest Mother

Lina Medina, the world's youngest mother

(source)

Lina Medina, her son and her doctor

(source)

Lina Medina is the world’s youngest confirmed mother in medical history. Born in Peru on 27 September 1933, Lina was brought to a hospital by her parents at the age of 5 because of an increasing abdominal size. Originally thought to have tumor, her doctors determined that she was in fact seven months pregnant. Dr. Gerardo Lozada took her to Lima, Peru, prior to the surgery to have other specialists confirm that Lina was in fact pregnant. A month and a half later, on 14 May 1939, she gave birth to a boy by cesarean section necessitated by her small pelvis. Her menarche had occurred at eight months of age (or 2½ according to a different article) and she had prominent breast development by the age of four. Extreme precocious puberty in children 5 or under is very uncommon.

Her son weighed 2.7 kg at birth and was named Gerardo after her doctor. Gerardo was raised believing that Lina was his sister, but found out at the age of ten that she was his mother. He grew up healthy but died in 1979 at the age of 40 of a disease of the bone marrow. There was never evidence that Lina Medina’s pregnancy occurred in any but the usual way, but she never revealed the father of the child, nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Dr. Escomel suggested she might not actually know herself. Lina’s father was arrested on suspicion of rape and incest, but was later released due to lack of evidence.

Lina is apparently still alive today.

More about pedophilia, incest, child marriage and rape. More iconic images of human rights violations.

Related Articles

• 10-Year-Old in Spain Is Not the First or Youngest Child Mom (healthland.time.com)

Human Rights Maps (109): Malaria

(source)

(source, click image to enlarge)

Each year, there are around 350-500 million new cases of malaria, killing between one and three million people, the majority of whom are young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is commonly associated with poverty – a human rights violations – and can indeed be a cause of poverty and a major hindrance to economic development.

And here’s a reminder that malaria was once common in the U.S.:

Map of malarial deaths in the United States, 1870

(source, click image to enlarge)

More human rights maps are here (some specifically about health matters are here, some about poverty here).

Related Articles

• The terrible toll of malaria (telegraph.co.uk)
• Mathematical Model Projects Potential Impact Of Current Tools Fighting Malaria In Africa (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Good Riddance to Mosquitoes: Four Ways to Beat the Malaria-Carrying Threat (scientificamerican.com)
• Can malaria be beaten? (independent.co.uk)
• New tool to map malaria developed (physorg.com)

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (68): Advocacy Equals Insanity

scene from the movie "Repulsion" by Polanski

Andrei Bondarenko, a trade union activist was ordered to undergo a forced psychiatric examination by a court in Vinnytsya, south west Ukraine. He is in hiding and fears that he will be subjected to psychiatric treatment because of his legitimate trade union and human rights activities. Andrei has never been treated or diagnosed with a mental illness, and has undergone three psychiatric examinations to prove his sanity. Nevertheless, a court granted the order for an examination after prosecutors argued that Andrei Bondarenko has an “excessive awareness of his own and others’ rights and [an] uncontrollable readiness to defend these rights in unrealistic ways.” (source)

In which case, I’m personally completely bonkers, but some of you already suspected that. More absurd human rights violations here.

Human Rights Maps (102): Travel Restrictions for People With HIV

(source)

More on AIDS and HIV. More on freedom of movement. More human rights maps.

Discrimination (7): Statistical Discrimination v. Background Checks?

Employers often use background checks before deciding to hire someone. For example, they may check the criminal record of job candidates, their credit scores, health history etc. It’s somewhat understandable although not always acceptable that they are reluctant to hire someone who has been in jail, has been sick for a long time, or has proven to be undisciplined by not paying her bills.

Let’s focus on ex-convicts for the moment. These people have a hard time as it is, sometimes even for no good reason because they shouldn’t have been incarcerated in the first place (I argued here that many countries, and especially the U.S., put too many people in jail). So, allowing employers to use criminal background checks can force ex-convicts into a vicious circle: unable to find a job, they may be forced to go back to crime.

Furthermore, there’s a racial aspect to all of this: in the U.S., African Americans are more likely to be ex-convicts. According to some, this racial discrepancy is precisely the reason to allow criminal background checks. If employers aren’t allowed to check individual candidates, they will resort to statistical discrimination: they know that blacks are more likely to have a criminal record and so they won’t hire any blacks at all, just to be safe.

However, if you espouse this argument in favor of background checks, you essentially want to make things better for one disadvantaged group – blacks, who are generally disadvantaged in employment, see here – by making things worse for an even more disadvantaged group, namely ex-convicts. And that’s assuming that employers will hire more black people if they can use criminal background checks; but assuming that means assuming there’s no racism. Helping a disadvantaged group by harming an even more disadvantaged group is plainly absurd, and you can only fail to see that it’s absurd if you have an overriding fear of government regulation. Regulation should be kept in check but not at any price. I think in this case regulating businesses and outlawing background checks is the appropriate thing to do.

Let’s turn briefly to another type of background check: credit scores.

[M]illions of Americans, as a direct consequence of looking for work, have lower credit scores. … The use of credit checks in employment decisions should be banned. It is a form of discrimination against the poor — the codification and enforcement of class barriers. It is therefore a form of discrimination against those groups more likely to be poor. (source)

It seems there’s a

growing tendency of HR departments to check the credit scores of potential employees apparently deeming this data to be an important predictor of employee behavior. This creates a Catch-22 scenario for the unemployed where you can’t improve your credit score unless you get a job and you can’t get a job until you improve your credit score. (source)

Apart from the obvious fact that credit scores seem to be a type of knowledge that is much less useful for an employer compared to a criminal record – if your house burned down and your credit score is low as a result, does that make you a bad employee? – there’s a real issue for the poor here. They shouldn’t be discriminated against just for being poor. It’s not just a lack of conscientiousness or discipline that can lower your credit score. Back luck and poverty won’t help either. Some say the free market and competition will take care of this: employers stupid enough not to hire good poor people simply because they have a credit problem will lose out. Their competitors who don’t engage in credit checks will hire them, and those businesses will acquire a commercial advantage. I don’t know. Seems awfully optimistic to me.

By the way, all this is another reason to make unemployment insurance more generous:

I’d rather see our energy focused on longer-term, more generous unemployment benefits that might keep some people from trashing their credit while they look for a job. (source)

Related Articles

• Are Businesses That Use Background Checks in Hiring Guilty of Discrimination? (race.change.org)
• Background Checks in Hiring: Discrimination or Due Diligence? (blogs.wsj.com)
• EEOC: Employers can’t refuse to hire convicts (hotair.com)
• How Job Screening Can Become Discrimination (abcnews.go.com)

Human Rights Facts (55): Helping the Poor by Giving Them Money

I posted before about a surprisingly successful method of helping the poor in developing countries: just give them money. Many of the supposed disadvantages of this method – people waste the money, transfers fuel inflation or create dependence, the money goes to the wrong people, is taken away by “patriarchs” or others, erodes the incentives to work etc. – don’t seem to materialize. And it’s fast and cost-effective compared to other types of development aid (no shipping costs for commodities, no risk of diversion of funds by corrupt governments, etc.). It also signals to the poor that they are viewed as responsible agents rather than dependent objects of assistance.

A variation of this system is called Conditional Cash-Transfers (CCTs): poor people get cash (or sometimes food supplies) if they meet certain conditions, e.g. send their children to school or have their babies vaccinated. Millions of people around the world are already benefiting from CCTs. These transfers are successful for many reasons, but an important one is that they allow the smoothing of income: poor people’s income is usually very volatile, with ups and downs, the downs being more frequent of course. CCTs give the poor a measure of income certainty, relieving the stress of not knowing if tomorrow they’ll have enough to survive another day. The added advantage of CCTs, compared to unconditional transfers, is that the children profit twice: their families have more income, and the conditions attached to the transfers usually benefit the children specifically.

Related Articles

• Just Give Money to the Poor? A Surprisingly Effective Solution to Poverty (alternet.org)
• Cash transfers cannot revolutionise aid | Sebastian Taylor (guardian.co.uk)
• Poor people in Leyte town to get cash subsidies from gov’t (newsinfo.inquirer.net)
• Direct transfers could end bureaucratic top-down foreign aid | Michael Edwards (guardian.co.uk)
• $59M loan from World Bank aimed at helping RP’s poor (newsinfo.inquirer.net)

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (95): The Efficiency of Development Aid

From The Onion:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI—Three months after a 7.0 earthquake rocked the impoverished island nation of Haiti, 36-year-old Brad Halder visited its demolished capital to see firsthand how his $10 donation to a relief fund was being spent. “It’s been a little while, so I just wanted to check in and make sure my money was being put to good use,” Halder told reporters while surveying the still largely devastated region. “To tell you the truth, I was kind of expecting to see a lot more new homes by now. And, I don’t know, maybe some new hospitals or something. But, jeez, did they get any of the $10 I sent them?” After noting that nearly 90 percent of the country still lived in abject poverty, Halder announced that any funds left over from his donation should probably go toward rebuilding Haiti’s infrastructure.

More serious posts on the earthquake in Haiti are here and here. The effectiveness of development aid is a highly contested topic. Here‘s one example of inefficient aid. Some even believe that we should stop giving aid altogether, perhaps with the exception of disaster relief after earthquakes and such. Dambisa Moyo is a well-known propagator of that argument (see here and here). Others believe that we should on the contrary increase the levels of development aid, while spending the money in a more efficient way (the U.S. is regularly scolded for it’s relatively low levels of development aid, and the joke above obviously refers to the U.S. in general rather than just one bloke). One way to make aid more efficient is cash transfers. Other types of efficient development aid – albeit indirect types of aid – are trade liberalization, investment, the promotion of migration and debt relief.

More jokes here.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (62): Life Imprisonment For Half an Ounce of Medical Marijuana?

A Texas state trooper stops a 1990 Mercedes with an expired registration sticker. The driver [not in the picture] says he does not have his driver’s license or proof of insurance. After arresting him for “failure to identify”, the trooper searches him and his car, finding 14 grams (half an ounce) of marijuana and hashish. Indicted for possession with intent to deliver, he could be sent to prison for the rest of his life.

Does it matter that the defendant is a 20-year-old asthmatic who obtained the cannabis with a doctor’s recommendation in California? Not under Texas law, which prohibits the use of marijuana for any purpose. And the situation in which Chris Diaz finds himself would be outrageous even without the medical angle. …

Although Diaz’s cannabis was still in the bottles used by the medical marijuana dispensary where he obtained it, Brown County prosecutors cite a cell phone “containing text messages referring to drug sales” and a notebook with “drug and law writings” as evidence of intent to deliver. (source)

More on the insane war on drugs in the U.S., on marijuana, and on incarceration. More absurd human rights violations.