The Ethics of Life
Charity in Hard Times
Peter Singer
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PRINCETON – As I tour the U.S. promoting my new book, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty , I am often asked if this isn’t the wrong time to call on affluent people to increase their effort to end poverty in other countries. I reply emphatically that it is not. There is no doubt that the world economy is in trouble. But if governments or individuals use this as an excuse to reduce assistance to the world’s poorest people, they would only multiply the seriousness of the problem for the world as a whole.
The financial crisis has been more damaging for the poor than it has been for the rich. Without in any way minimizing the economic and psychological blow that people experience when they lose their jobs, the unemployed in affluent countries still have a safety net, in the form of social security payments, and usually free health care and free education for their children. They also have sanitation and safe drinking water.
The poor in developing countries have none of these benefits, which proves fatal for an estimated 18 million of them each year. That’s a higher annual death toll than during World War II, and it’s easier to prevent.
Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly ten million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases like measles, diarrhea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent.
We may feel the pain of falling back from a level of affluence to which we have grown accustomed, but most people in developed countries are still, by historical standards, extraordinarily well off. Have you, in the past week, bought a bottle of water, a beer, or a coffee when tap water was available at no cost? If you did, that’s a luxury that the world’s poorest billion people can’t afford, because they have to live for an entire day on what you spent on just one of those drinks.
One reason that we can afford to increase the amount of aid we give is that the amount we are giving now is insignificant in comparison to what we spend on other things. The United States government, for example, spends about $22 billion on foreign aid, while Americans privately donate perhaps another $10 billion.
Compared to the $787 billion stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama last month, that $32 billion is trivial. It’s also less than $0.25 for every $100 that Americans earn. Of course, some nations do better: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg all exceed the United Nations target of allocating the equivalent of 0.7% of gross national income in foreign aid. But even $0.70 for every $100 is still not a lot with which to confront one of the great moral problems of our age.
If extreme poverty is allowed to increase, it will give rise to new problems, including new diseases that will spread from countries that cannot provide adequate health care to those that can. Poverty will lead to more migrants seeking to move, whether legally or not, to rich nations. When there is eventually an economic recovery, the global economy will be smaller than it would be if all the world’s people could take part in it.
Nor is the global financial crisis a justification for the world’s leaders failing to keep their word. Nearly nine years ago, at the Millennium Development Summit in New York, the leaders of 180 countries, including all the major affluent nations, promised that by 2015 they would together achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
These goals include halving the proportion of the world’s people living in poverty and ensuring that children everywhere receive a full primary education. Since that meeting in 2000, the commitments made by most nations have fallen short of what is required, and 2015 is now only six years away.
If we cut back on aid, we will fail to keep our promise, and poorer countries will learn, once again, that rich countries’ actions fall short of their inspiring rhetoric about reducing world poverty. That is not a good basis for future cooperation between rich and poor countries on issues such as climate change.
Finally, if anything good comes out of this global financial crisis, it will be a reassessment of our basic values and priorities. We need to recognize that what really matters isn’t buying more and more consumer goods, but family, friends, and knowing that we are doing something worthwhile with our lives. Helping to reduce the appalling consequences of world poverty should be part of that reassessment.
Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. For further details on The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, please go to www.thelifeyoucansave.com.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org
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ceabbate7 06:19 18 Oct 10
My question for Dr. Singer is in regards to his two moral stances on (1) ending world poverty and (2) his view on eliminating animal suffering in the meat industry. If we have a choice:
(A) To spend $10.00 on a package of vegan X or (B) spend $6.00 on a package of Y that was produced from a factory farm, and donate $4.00 to a global poverty relief organization, which should we choose?
A few conditions to keep in mind for this scenario:
1. X and Y are equal in quantity.
2. In theory, both X and Y are equally healthy. (Obviously, eating actual animal products will lead to negative health conditions down the road, and will end up costing us more money in the future (medical bills), and hence less money we could donate to 3rd world countries overall. But let us set this aside, and in theory, pretend that both options are equally healthy.)
3. We have no other financial means of donating to a poverty relief organization besides this extra $4 we would save by buying Y instead of X. We just barely can afford the basic necessities in life, and if we were to donate to a charity, the monetary means would be a result of eating cheaper food.
4. X and Y are our only choices to meet our dietary needs-- we cannot find a cheaper substitute for X. This amounts to saying we will essentially pay more for our food as a vegan than if we were to buy products from the meat industry.
The question basically amounts to; how far do we need to go to eliminate world poverty? Is this issue more important than the issue of animal welfare?
nyugolfer 05:54 17 Jul 10
Peter I share you sentiments and I remember you making a similar argument in One World which I admired. I do wonder how you bring yourself to spend any money though knowing as you say:
"Have you, in the past week, bought a bottle of water, a beer, or a coffee when tap water was available at no cost? If you did, that’s a luxury that the world’s poorest billion people can’t afford, because they have to live for an entire day on what you spent on just one of those drinks."
With this line of reasoning am I suppose to feel guilty after every beer I drink or coffee I enjoy daily? Do you hold yourself to such austere standards? Do you not spend any money outside of meeting your basic needs?
I have a feeling you do and you are simply reminding the rich just how rich "we" are relative to the poor but feel you overplay the guilt card to much. If we all lived like the poorest of the poor life would, well to be frank, suck.
So I am mainly curious about how you live you life day in and day out. Do you ever go on vacation? As we speak, I am traveling the world on a budget financed by personal savings. Should I have not taken this trip and donated the funds to help the poor?
Or maybe could it be that this trip will provide a first hand account of those abject conditions you describe? Granted I am living very well abroad, I have been sick numerous times because water used to wash my food is simply not clean. Maybe I will appreciate the little things a bit more, the coffee's and the beer etc?
From your line of reasoning I simply cant justify doing anything with my life beyond basic sustenance living, because every dollar spent traveling, drinking beer and so on could have been spent helping the poor.
So what I am asking is how you personally can justify spending money on a coffee when you know that money could have been spent on the poor? Are you exempt because you devote much of your work outside of drinking coffee (assuming you spend money on such things...but maybe I am wrong) to raising awareness on these issues?
I hope you understand I admire your work and I am simply curious (As someone who would like to do my part) about how you deal with the above questions?