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Namibia’s BIG anti-poverty experiment
By Veronica UyINQUIRER.net First Posted 17:40:00 10/28/2010

BRUSSELS, Belgium—Before the BIG program started in 2007, Otjivero was a typical Namibia village. Most of its 1,000 residents were poor, hungry, and unemployed. The few who are rich own large farms; they are white people of German descent.
“The biggest problem was unemployment. There is no work,” said Herbert Jauch, of the Basic Income Grant (BIG) Coalition.
The statistics—60 percent unemployment rate (higher than the 51 percent national average), 86 percent “severely poor” households, and 76 percent below food poverty line—is fleshed out by this statement of a Otjivero resident pre-BIG: “Some days we don’t have anything to eat and we just have to go and sleep and get up again without eating. We are really hungry.”
The two-year program, co-funded by international religious organizations and the local government, is premised on the idea that people are entitled to a basic income, which the poor need this to get out of poverty. It short-circuited the traditional “trickle-down” approach to poverty reduction. (Usually, governments tinker with the macro-economic issues such as interest rates to spur economic activity which they hope would trickle down to the masses.)
But in this program, everyone—rich, poor, young, old, white, black—got BIG, or 100 Namibian dollars a month. (Parents get their children’s share.) Not to distinguish between rich and poor, “universalizing” or opening this social protection mechanism to everyone also made it easier to administer; proponents did not have to spend on setting up a mechanism to identify who may or may not be entitled to BIG. And with the rich so few, the program could afford to include them.
More than these, this no-discrimination aspect of the program did not create a disincentive for the poor to lift themselves out of poverty. If they achieved some level of comfort, they would still get BIG. And the rich are not given another reason to look down on the poor.
BIG impact
Within 12 months of BIG, the number of “severely poor” households dropped from 86 percent to 43 percent, the number of households below the food poverty line fell from 76 percent to 16 percent, and unemployment dropped from 60 percent to 45 percent.
Before BIG, almost half of the children did not attend school regularly. Passing rates stood at 40 percent. School fees were N$50 a year, but before BIG, less than half the parents paid the amount, and the children were more interested in the free food given at schools than in learning. “Many children stay away if they do not receive food,” said a teacher in November 2007, just before BIG was implemented. Within a year, 90 percent paid school fees and drop-out rates were virtually eliminated.
Overall crime rates dropped by 42 percent. Stock theft (essential items like firewood were most commonly stolen) fell by 43 percent, the rate of other theft cases declined by nearly 20 percent. “Theft cases have declined a lot. We buy wood most of the time and don’t have many cases of people stealing wood any more. Fighting and drinking have also been reduced,” a resident noted.
Jauch said economic activities within the village “increased substantially,” with residents setting up their own micro-enterprises, providing what the community needs. “Where income from wage employment increased by 19 percent, income from self-employment increased by 301 percent (!) and income from farming increased by 36 percent,” he said.
A BIG recipient said he used part of the BIG money to buy materials and make dresses which are sold for N$150 each.
Contrary to what some critics said at the start of the program, BIG did not make people lazy or dependent on the money. In fact, people found ways to be productive, creating a local market in the process. It was all a matter of giving them the opportunity to pull themselves up by their boot straps.
Transformed people
But more than the macro-economic indicators, Jauch was more impressed by the transformation among the people. Beyond the economics, he said, there was emancipation and dignity, especially among the women, who used BIG to reduce their dependency on men.
“When the young strong men come with lots of money, I no longer have to sleep with them to have enough money to buy food for my family. I can send them away now,” he quoted a village woman.
What can be more powerful testament to the program than that? What can show more transformation than that? Jauch asked.
Now, the BIG Coalition is trying to convince the national government to adopt the program for the whole of Namibia. Jauch admits that the costs of a national BIG are substantial with net costs of N$1.2 billion to 1.6 billion per year, or equivalent to 2.2 percent to 3 percent of GDP and 5 percent to 6 percent of national budget.
But he and fellow BIG advocates insist that various financing options exist. There’s VAT and income tax adjustments, re-prioritization of the national budget, improved tax collection, and a special levy on natural resources or a combination of measures.
The cost obstacle seems surmountable, and more importantly, more than worth the effort given its immediate positive impact on so many people’s lives.
This social experiment, which was presented at the Rosa Luxemburg seminar-workshop on social protection as a side event of the Asia-Europe People’s Forum in Brussels, Belgium, should form part of the debate on the Philippines’ own attempt to reduce poverty and inequality through the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) conditional cash transfer program. Herbert Jauch, one of the developers of the Basic Income Grant in Namibia (BIG Coalition) who has also scientifically monitored it, made the presentation.http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20101028-300280/Namibias-BIG-anti-poverty-experiment
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The Philippines' Department of Social Welfare and Development, with help from the Departments of Education and Health started a program way back in 2003 or 2004. Many Filipino children do not go to school for the simple reason that they want to eat. They'd rather go to the public markets and do chores and errands and as baggage boys and shoe shine boys. And so a program was conceived to keep these poor children in school, they are the ones who need education the most to improve their social mobility.
Public school teachers identify the poorest children and they are then enrolled in the program. They receive a daily stipend, a kilogram of rice and personal care products (soaps, toothpaste etc). In return, the parents have to make sure the children attend school regularly and the children should get regular check-ups at the Department of Health's Community Health Centers (where they received immunization, vitamins, anti-helminthics as needed and their health monitored closely, the children's health cards are presented every month to the respective class advisor of the children).
This program received so much criticism and there were claims that it may encourage indolence of the poor, which will make them poorer still. Its funding, inadequate as it was was several times threatened to be cut by politicians.
But I think it is serving its purpose. I have a compadre, a jeepney driver (jeepneys are converted WWII jeeps used as public transportation) who slipped in his bathroom and broke his left femur. A titanium prostheses replaced the head of the femur at an operation done at the National Orthopedic Hospital (almost everything was free, although they had to pay for the titanium protheses, at a big discount), my friend still couldn't work. He didn't have money for rehabilitation therapy and it took him awhile to move about in crutches. He couldn't work and his family's daily fare were being provided by well-meaning relatives and friends. His children sometimes do not go to school prompting their teachers to visit them and after assessing the situation enrolled the 3 children into the program. The 3 kilos of rice daily is sufficient for their needs and only a small amount for viand is needed. This continued for several months until my friend can work again. After his first month on his job, he visited the school and thanked the teachers and asked them to withdraw his children from the program. He wanted another family in dire need to benefit from the program too and he knew that there isn't much funding. - Ariel





