Barbados compared to Bloomberg

from the Nation Plus, Barbados

A good analysis on what is going on to combat poverty in New York City and Barbados. - Kale

BY TONY BEST

BORROW THE TITLE of Charles Dickens' famous novel and call the story A Tale Of Two Cities – Bridgetown and New York.

This time it's about poverty – how to count the numbers and what to do about the poor in the two places.

As Barbados' Minister of Social Care Dr Denis Lowe said in New York recently: "I really don't believe we appreciate the extent to which people are living in poverty in Barbados."

And in New York, Linda Gibbs, deputy mayor in the Bloomberg administration, said a new study had shown that the poverty rate in the five boroughs was 23 per cent of the 8.2 million people who call the city home, who now live below the poverty line. That's 416 000 more poor people than the federal government acknowledged. Washington's calculations put the poverty rate at 19 per cent in the city.

Of course, New York and Barbados recognise a hard fact of life: like death and taxes, the poor will always be with us.

That conclusion may be a part of the arsenal for sceptics but it has a sound basis: the Bible, which reminds everyone in the New Testament that "the poor always ye have with you".

According to figures compiled by international organisations, including the United Nations (UN) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Barbados has one of the lowest rates of poverty in the Caribbean and Latin America. As a matter of fact, it is among the lowest in the developing world.

Several years ago, the IDB estimated that 14 per cent of Barbados' population lived in poverty while UN data showed that in energy-rich Trinidad and Tobago, the figure was 21 per cent; Jamaica almost 18 per cent; Venezuela 31 per cent; Haiti 65; Colombia 64; Egypt 16; Dominican Republic 42; Turkey 27; Cameroon 40; Sri Lanka 26 and India 29 per cent. Other sources put poverty in Guyana at 33 per cent and The Bahamas about nine per cent.

Same conclusion

Small wonder, then, that both Barbados and New York have reached the same conclusion: something must be done about the poor. Interestingly, they are not talking about wiping out poverty but about reducing the numbers, making life easier for the less fortunate.

But that's entirely new. In the 1960s, the United States launched its extensive "anti-poverty" programmes that were effectively eliminated by the Republicans in the 1970s. In the 1990s, the Arthur Administration launched its initiative, calling it "Social Transformation", with the emphasis on upgrading people's homes and boosting the "social safety net" that aims to prevent Bajans from tumbling into abject poverty.

While Lowe conceded that Barbados had made "significant progress" in reducing poverty over the years, the problem still persists and he hopes to replace the "safety net" with a "trampoline" that would enable the poor to jump out of their current state, through the provision of training, jobs and other opportunities.

Just like New York, Barbados is planning to tackle the problem first by finding out how many people are trapped in poverty. Hence, plans for a comprehensive study.

"That's needed because most of the statistics we have been working with are old statistics," said Lowe.

What New York did was to devise a new scientific method, its own alternative approach to measure the poverty line.

The city's approach takes into consideration both the cost of living and the benefits people receive from the government. The model puts the poverty line for a family of four at US$26 138, that's an increase of almost US$6 000 from the current sum of US$20 444. The upshot: Brooklyn, where most Bajans and other West Indians live, now has 5.5 per cent more poor people than before; Queens, another borough with a large concentration of Caribbean immigrants, saw its figure jump by about eight per cent; Staten Island by 4.7 per cent; the Bronx 1.3 per cent, and Manhattan's should rise by 3.6 per cent.

The model paints a grim picture of New Yorkers who are senior citizens. About 32 per cent of them live below the poverty line as compared with the federal estimate of about 19 per cent. Part of the problem is the high cost of prescription drugs for seniors. With diabetes and hypertension rampant in New York, the cost of drugs has pushed many seniors into poverty.

Barbados' drug scheme relieves much of the financial burden on seniors who have diabetes and high blood pressure. New York doesn't have a similar scheme.

In Barbados, however, there is the 'feminisation of poverty', meaning women account for the largest group on welfare.

Some things are clear about what New York and Barbados are trying to do. The first is that the models they use to measure poverty aren't foolproof. Secondly, they would only be useful if the results are used to lift people out of poverty.

There may be a political calculation to the Thompson administration's plan: find out now how many Bajans are now poor so that three or four years from now, the Government doesn't have to answer a charge that it ushered in a period of rising poverty.


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