Poverty-Reading Response

Peter Singer’s essay in which he provides us with his solution to ending world poverty poses some unique ethical dilemmas.  Singer’s perspective as an academic challenging his readers to think about the role their actions or inactions have on the world at large is different from Chitra Divakaruni who recounts her firsthand experience with child labor in India.  Singer gives us specific directives that we must implement in order to eliminate world poverty in the world.  He tells us that American households need only $30,000 annually for necessities, freeing many billions of dollars to solve global poverty.  I do not believe that Singer’s approach is feasible for several reasons.  First, the amount allotted for necessities would fluctuate depending upon the number of family members and the specific location where the family lives.  Raising a family in New York City is inherently more expensive than raising a family in Des Moines, Iowa.  Moreover, the definition of what is a necessity is open to ample interpretation.  Is providing a college education for your children a necessity or a luxury?  Singer himself seems to recognize this conflict where he challenges the readers “of this article with $200 to spare” to donate that money to an overseas aid agency.  Ask most Americans and I bet very few claim to have $200 to spare to give to charity.  Singer correctly points out that it is much easy to deny $200 to a child living in Bangladesh than the shoeless man panhandling in front of the bus station in your hometown.  “Out of sight, out of mind” is clearly alive and well in the United States.  Embarrassingly, Americans for all our wealth are hardly a generous nation.  Singer points out that we give less than .09% of our gross national product to charity, while Danes give almost 1% of their GNP.

            Chitra Divakaruni’s article “Live Free and Starve” provides a unique perspective of child labor in parts of the world that many Americans cannot even pronounce, much less locate on a map.  Divakaruni’s Indian family “employed” the services of Nimai, who started with her family at age 10, as a household servant because he was too sickly to work in the fields with the rest of his siblings.  Looking back from her current perspective in the United States, Divakaruni is somewhat embarrassed by her family relationship with Nimai as she recounts how Nimai “ate the same food that we children did and was given new cloths during Indian New Year, just as we     were.”  While I am sure that Divakaruni’s mother was kind to Nimai, it is disingenuous for Divakaruni to suggest that her mother lavished the same type of attention on him that she did on her own children.  However, she is correct that the type of legislation discussed in the article does anything more than make most Americans feel good about themselves.  The ultimate root of the problem, systemic poverty in some parts of the world, is not fixed simply by putting the children who labor out of work.  Then they are able to contribute to the basic food and shelter needs of their families.  Slavery and prostitution are real dangers for such children who cannot earn a “legitimate” wage.  Will Americans really pay the higher costs for goods coming from these impoverished nations that will be necessary to provide safe working environments with a living wage for these children?  I am not so sure.