Free exchange

Penury portrait

贫困的历史画像

The consensus on raising people out of poverty is surprisingly recent

直到最近人们才就脱贫问题达成共识，实在令人惊讶

Jul 27th 2013 |From the print edition

ON JULY 17th India released its latest poverty figures. They tell an encouraging tale: just under 22% of Indians were below the poverty line in 2011-12, down from over 37% in 2004-05. With an election not far off, these statistics will not go unchallenged. Naysayers are already grumbling that the numbers have been released early to make the government look good. But even as political opponents slug it out, it is worth noting what they are not arguing about. Nobody is saying that a decline in poverty is a bad thing. Nor does anyone dispute that policymakers should try to help large numbers of poor people out of penury. This mirrors a worldwide consensus: whether the United Nations or the World Bank, sundry public officials or high-minded celebrities, everyone thinks that poverty alleviation is both desirable and possible. The debates are about the details.

7月17日，印度公布了最新的贫困人口数据。数据表现出一派令人鼓舞的迹象：2011年至2012年间，生活在贫困线以下的印度人口比例从2004至2005年间的37%以上降至22%以下。该数据公布之时恰逢印度国会大选日益临近，因此注定会引发质疑。质疑者已嚷嚷着这些数据提早发布不过是为了彰显政府的政绩。但是，即使政治对手意欲在此问题上与政府争个高下，可争议之外的东西才是值得人们关注的。没人说贫困人口数下降是一件糟糕的事。当然人们也不会就决策层是否应该试着帮助为数众多的穷人脱离贫困展开争论。这一现象反映出一个已在世界范围内达成的共识：不论是联合国（United Nations）或是世界银行（World Bank），还是形形色色的公职人员或心系苍生的名人，人人都认为扶贫不仅可取，而且可行。所有的争论都关乎于细节问题。

That might sound wholly unsurprising. Yet in a new paper Martin Ravallion, an economics professor at Georgetown University and a former research director at the World Bank, charts the evolution of thinking on poverty over the past three centuries. He reckons that this consensus is of remarkably recent vintage. Not that long ago every element of the received wisdom—that poverty is a problem, that public policy should try to reduce the numbers of poor, and that there are good ways to try to do so without hurting the economy—would have been suspect.

这听起来完全不足为奇。然而，曾担任过世界银行研究局局长的乔治城大学（Georgetown University）经济学教授马丁•拉瓦雷（Martin Ravallion）在一篇论文中记录了过去三个世纪以来人们对贫困的思考的演变历程。他认为直到最近人们才在贫困的认知方面达成共识。就在不久之前，长期积累下来并且为多数人所接受的观念——贫困是个难题，公共政策应该试着减少贫困人口数量，而且有一些既能够达成这一目标而又不伤害经济发展的方式——一直都受到人们的质疑。

According to the mercantilist thinking that dominated European thought between the 16th and 18th centuries, poverty was socially useful. True, it was miserable for the poor. But it also kept the economic engine humming by ensuring the availability of plentiful cheap labour. Bernard de Mandeville, an 18th-century economist and philosopher, thought it “manifest, that in a free nation where slaves are not allow’d of, the surest wealth consists in a multitude of laborious poor.” That attitude was the norm.

在16世纪到18世纪间占据欧洲思想界的重商主义者看来，贫困对社会是有所帮助的。的确，在当时这对穷人来说不啻于一个悲惨的世界。但是，贫困同样确保了充足的廉价劳动力，维持经济引擎不断高速运转。18世纪经济学家兼哲学家的伯纳德•曼德维尔（Bernard de Mandevill）认为贫困“表明，在一个不允许有奴隶存在的自由国度里，最可靠的财富蕴藏在无数勤恳的穷人手中。”这一观点在当时实属平常。

If poor people were regarded as instrumental in ensuring economic development, that explains why there was little appetite for policies to help them leave poverty behind. What action there was tended to be palliative in nature. In the 18th century changes to the Poor Laws were designed to stop adverse shocks like failed harvests or bereavements from making life even harder for already poor people. Such policies were designed to protect the poor from the worst deprivations, not to raise them up.

如果穷人被视为确保经济发展的工具，这就解释为什么在当时几乎没有人愿意制定实行帮助穷人脱离贫困的政策了。为消除贫困而采取的任何行动在当时看来根本就是治标不治本的。18世纪，修订《济贫法》的目的便是避免那些业已陷入贫困的人们遭受更悲惨的打击，比如说农作物歉收或遭受丧亲之痛，以免他们的生活更加艰辛。制定此类政策的目的是保护穷人免于陷入彻底的赤贫，而不是帮助他们脱离贫困。

In the late 18th century attitudes towards the poor took on a moralising tone. Thomas Malthus, a clergyman, blamed the plight of the poor on their own flaws. Technological change might drive wages above subsistence levels, but only temporarily because the fecundity of the poor would soon drive wages back down. His thinking inspired the introduction of a new Poor Law in 1834, which tried to make the workhouse their only option. “Outdoor relief”—giving the poor money—needed to be stopped.

18世纪后半叶，人们在对贫穷的看法中夹杂了道德论调。身为牧师的托马斯•马尔萨斯（Thomas Malthus）将穷人的困苦归咎于他们自身的不足。技术革新或许会驱使薪资上涨到能维持温饱的水平之上，但是这只是暂时的，因为穷人的多生多育很快就会带动薪资回落。他的思想启发了当时政府在1834年引进实施了一部新的《济贫法》，试图使去济贫院成为穷人唯一的选择。“院外救济”——给穷人发钱——必须终止。

Adam Smith took a more humane view. He saw the social and emotional toll poverty could take, and sought to increase support for the idea of redistributive taxation: “The rich should contribute to the public expence [sic], not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” But even the father of economics did not provide a coherent strategy for moving people permanently out of poverty.

亚当•斯密的观点则更为人性化。他认为贫困会对社会和人们的情绪造成恶劣的影响，同时寻找机会增加人们对税收再分配这一理念的支持。“富人应该为公共支出贡献出一部分所得，不单单以其收入的比例计算，而是应该高于这一比例。”但是，即便是经济学之父也未给帮助人们永远脱离贫困开出一剂疗效持久的药方。

By the 20th century the research of Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree had brought the issue of poverty firmly into the public consciousness. This in turn encouraged new thinking about the economic rationale for reducing penury. The classical school believed that the real constraint on growth was aggregate savings. Given that the rich saved more than the poor, this implied that less poverty would mean lower growth. John Maynard Keynes disputed this view, arguing that it was aggregate consumption that mattered, in which case reducing poverty could actually aid growth. But it was not until the 1990s that a coherent theoretical framework emerged to show how high levels of poverty stifled investment and innovation. For example, several models showed how unequal access to credit meant that the poor were less able to invest in their own education or businesses than was optimal, leading to lower growth for the economy as a whole. Scholars buttressed the theory with empirical evidence that high initial levels of poverty reduced subsequent growth in developing countries.

20世纪，查尔斯•布斯（Charles Booth）和希波姆•朗特里（Seebohm Rowntree）将贫困问题深深地刻入了公众的意识之中。这一举动反过来鼓励了人们对减少贫困的经济原理有了全新思考。古典学派相信真正制约经济增长的是总储蓄量。由于富人比穷人储蓄的多，这表明贫困人数越少就意味着经济增长率越低。约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯（John Maynard Keynes）驳斥了这一观点，他认为总消费量起到了至关重要的作用，在这种情况下，减少贫困实际上能够有助于增长。但是直到1990年代，一个统一的理论框架才出现，表明高水平的贫困如何限制了投资和创新。比如说，有些经济学模型表明获得信贷的机会不均等是如何导致穷人比优秀的人更无力于投资自身的教育或是生意，进而导致整个社会的经济增长处于较低的水平。学者们用无可辩驳的证据给为之一理论提供了支持：在发展中国家，初始的高水平贫困率降低了该国后继的经济增长。

Poor relations

牵强的联系

New theories of poverty were also overturning received notions of why the poor stayed poor. The fault had long been placed at their door: the poor were variously lazy, prone to alcoholism and incapable of disciplined work. Such tropes are still occasionally heard today, but the horrors of the Depression in the 1930s led many to re-evaluate the idea that poverty was mainly the result of people’s own actions. Advances in economic models meanwhile allowed policymakers to see how low levels of education, health and nutrition could keep people stuck in penury. Policies to subsidise education or health care were desirable not merely for their own sake but also because they would help people break out of poverty.

新的贫困理论同样也颠覆了人们长久以来对穷人深陷贫穷原因的认知。一直以来都认为穷人是咎由自取：穷人想方设法偷懒，容易酗酒并且不能从事要求纪律性的工作。今天这些陈词滥调依然不时的喧嚣尘上，但是1930年代经济大萧条期间的惨况使一些人重新审视了贫困主要是人自身行为的恶果这一个观念。同时，经济学模型不断完善，使得决策者们认识到低水平的教育、健康和营养是如何使人们陷入贫困难以自拔。补贴教育和医保的政策能够得以执行不单单是因为自身的缘故，同样还因为这政策能够帮助人们摆脱贫困。

The growth of “conditional cash transfers”, schemes like Brazil’s Bolsa Familia that give poor people money as long as they send their children to school or have them vaccinated, are logical developments of these ideas. The notion of schooling the poor to a better life seemed absurd in the era of de Mandeville: “Going to school in comparison to working is idleness, and the longer boys continue in this easy sort of life, the more unfit they’ll be when grown up for downright labour.” Such poverty of thinking may sound archaic, but it persisted for longer than you might think.

“有条件的现金补助计划”的增多正是这些理念合乎逻辑的演进，比如说巴西的“家庭补助金计划”，只要人们将孩子送去学校或是给孩子接种牛痘疫苗，政府就给他们发放现金。在曼德维尔所处的时代，为了能过上更好的生活而让穷人去上学的理念似乎有些荒谬。“与工作比起来，上学就是懒惰的表现，而且孩子们过这种简单生活的时间越长，长大之后越难以适应完全的体力劳动。”这对关于贫困的想法听起来可能会感觉有些过时，但是它们持续的时间超乎你的想象。