The Poor in Rich Countries and the Poor in Poor Countries

Is poverty in a rich country the same as poverty in a poor country? In fact, renting a room in a wealthy household is better in many ways than renting one in a poor household. For one thing, the living conditions are likely to be better.

In Washington, D.C.—the U.S. capital, a city where wealthy and powerful white Americans live—I often found myself comparing the poor and their children in Southeast, the city’s poorest neighborhood, to those in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries.

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is currently undergoing rapid development. New real estate developers and commercial tycoons are emerging, and labor brokers are amassing wealth by sending workers to the Middle East. However, I was in Bangladesh in 2005, when development was still in its early stages, and the vast majority of people were still poor. Especially just outside Dhaka, the area was agricultural, and the people were simple and unassuming. You didn’t have to tie up your cows—there were no cattle thieves—and the children were innocent. At that time, Bangladesh ranked first in the world in happiness.

Public schools in Bangladesh tend to have quite a large number of students per school. The school I visited was dimly lit by faint fluorescent lights in a concrete building; due to a lack of seating, three students were crammed into a space meant for two. The children wore rather shabby uniforms and flip-flops, though some didn’t even have flip-flops. Since it’s a hot country and there were practically no windows, dust kept blowing in from outside, so the children sitting on the classroom floor had to constantly sweep it away with brooms.

This public school, which serves 700 students, has only two restrooms. Even those were so smelly that you couldn’t even get close to them. The children said that when they needed to use the restroom, their only option was to run across the single-lane asphalt road into the neighborhood and use a neighbor’s restroom or their own home. Since they had to cross the asphalt road between the school and their homes, accidents happened quite often. The girls said there were many days they couldn’t come to school because they had to help with housework and take care of their younger siblings. In fact, it’s not uncommon for girls around the age of 10 to start working as maids in other people’s homes. Come to think of it, this is similar to how things used to be in my country.

All the children were poor but innocent; they were fascinated by my visit and swarmed around me like a cloud, and the boys ran in a pack behind the car as I left. The scene in Indiana Jones where the children gather isn’t just a movie scene. In a poor country where the basic necessities of life are hard to come by in an absolute sense, it’s only natural for innocent children to gather around a visitor simply because they find them so fascinating.

In 2019, I’m looking at the poor children here in this wealthy country while thinking back on those days. Even though these children are poor, their basic needs are met through government assistance. They eat breakfast and lunch at school, but most of the food ends up in the trash. They don’t particularly cherish anything. If they have something, they use it; if they don’t, they ask for it. Sometimes, their attitude when asking for things is as if they’re saying, “Just give it to me.” Material deprivation is relative; by absolute standards, these children are not greatly materially deprived.

However, compared to the children of Bangladesh—which ranks first in happiness—these children are mentally depleted. The sense of relative deprivation their parents feel is passed directly on to them. Mental issues stemming from their parents and home environment are the biggest problem. Almost no children are raised by normal parents. They’re mostly raised by single single mothers, grandmothers, or foster parents. Few parents have stable jobs; there are parents mired in helplessness, fathers who’ve just been released from prison, mothers who currently have mental issues, children who’ve witnessed their father’s death, and so on.

The hardest thing to bear is society’s contemptuous gaze at those children. Even though I just witnessed a murder and assault here, it hasn’t been reported—not even on the DC Police Department’s incident alert page, let alone the news. The poor in a rich country feel poorer than the poor in a poor country and become more mentally drained.

It makes me wonder if, in a way, this life—even while receiving welfare benefits in a rich country like this—might actually be more miserable than living as a poor person in a poor country without proper welfare benefits.

12/12/2019 by Dr. Lan Joo