effects of poverty in africa essay

The Problem of Poverty in Africa Essay

Introduction, background of the study, problem statement, research questions, hypotheses and variables, theoretical framework, works cited.

The paper is a proposal on how the problem of poverty in Africa can be solved. The study will use a mixed research approach in attaining its goals (Creswell, 2009). The major aim of the study is to identify the causes of poverty and propose best strategies that can help Africans come out of poverty.

Africa has long been known to suffer from a number of calamities such as floods, drought among others; however the issue of poverty seems to have brushed the continents the wrong way leaving thousands of individuals dead. According to Adato et al., 2006 Currently poverty is seen as a long problem that will continue to be with us, as long as the world remains. Mahatma Gandhi had some of the most creative insights into this problem with regards to India. Mao Tse Tung was similarly quite creative on this issue in China, as was John Kenneth Galbraith with regards to affluent society. There are numerous people who have lost many a night’s sleep on this matter in Africa.

[Poverty is relative, not absolute. It is about getting basic needs, not huge material surpluses. It is about having enough resources for meeting basic needs for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. It is about none material satisfaction not excess material goods of little intrinsic value] (Adato et al., 2006: 23).

There is no doubt that there exist large volumes of material regarding poverty in Africa. With this there are a number of solutions that have been brought forth with the aim of curbing poverty in the continent. Despite the fact that the majority of the authors have tried to address the causes so that they can develop best strategies, their is a gap in trying to establish how best the proposed strategies will be implemented based on the variation in a number of issues such as population, policies in each and every country. The study will thus seek not only to bring out the causes of poverty and how to curb it but propose how to implement the strategies based on the country’s needs.

The research question that will guide the study is what the major ways of curbing poverty in Africa are. From this, the three main objectives of the study are:

• To find out how prevalent is poverty in Africa
• To establish the major causes of poverty in Africa
• To find out the best strategies to curb the issue of poverty in Africa.

The hypotheses for the study are:

• H o There is a significant difference in causes of poverty.
• H o There is a significance difference in strategies used in curbing poverty in Africa and its reduction
• H o There is significant difference in the prevalence of poverty in Africa.

The dependent variable in the study is poverty. It is worth noting that this is the variable the research will try to predict its variation in presence of certain variable known to be independent is important. The independent variable will include all the causes of poverty and the strategies used to curb the same (Reynolds, 2007).

It has been argued that the world food production is enough to feed the world populations. The major problem associated with poverty has been deemed to be unequal distribution of wealth and the natural resources plus the opportunity to access financial resources for investments (Creswell, 2009).

It is human understanding that wealth is generated by labour upon acting on natural resources. From this notion it is evident that if the same is made available to each and everyone and the individuals are encouraged, able and at will to work tirelessly, then poverty could be history. Nonetheless, this is not the case as this vital resource lies in the hands of a few individuals who exercise monopoly over them. Another problem that has caused poverty is the unfair market prices of goods and services from the continent. It is postulated that equal distribution of natural resources and fair market policies will help the poor in Africa to have enough to eat, shelter, clothing and education (Adato et al., 2006.).

Adato, M., Carter, M. & May, J. 2006. Exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in South Africa using qualitative and quantitative data. Journal of Development Studies , 42(1): 226 – 247.

Creswell, J. 2009. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Reynolds, P. 2007. A primer in theory construction. Boston: Pearson Education.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, January 11). The Problem of Poverty in Africa. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-problem-of-poverty-in-africa/

"The Problem of Poverty in Africa." IvyPanda , 11 Jan. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/the-problem-of-poverty-in-africa/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'The Problem of Poverty in Africa'. 11 January.

IvyPanda . 2022. "The Problem of Poverty in Africa." January 11, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-problem-of-poverty-in-africa/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Problem of Poverty in Africa." January 11, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-problem-of-poverty-in-africa/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Problem of Poverty in Africa." January 11, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-problem-of-poverty-in-africa/.

• Curbing Iron Deficiency Anaemia
• Marketing of the "Taxi of Tomorrow" in New York City
• Crime Control: Curbing Market Failures
• Criminal Justice System Role in Curbing Crime Rates
• The Story "Will the Sun Rise Tomorrow?"
• Breast Self-Exams Curbing Breast Cancer Mortality
• Transformational Leadership in Curbing Street Violence
• Legalizing Electronic Vaping as the Means of Curbing the Rates of Smoking
• Lewis’ Race Against Time: Curbing HIV&AIDS in Africa
• Curbing Elder Abuse and Neglect
• What Was It Like to Be Poor in 19th-20th Century England?
• The Effects of Poverty Within Criminal Justice
• On How to Eradicate Homelessness
• The Poverty Rates in the USA
• Poverty in America: A Paradox

• Where We Work

While Poverty in Africa Has Declined, Number of Poor Has Increased

• This page in:

#Music4Dev Guest MzVee Calls for an End to Poverty Through Song

You have clicked on a link to a page that is not part of the beta version of the new worldbank.org. Before you leave, we’d love to get your feedback on your experience while you were here. Will you take two minutes to complete a brief survey that will help us to improve our website?

Feedback Survey

Thank you for agreeing to provide feedback on the new version of worldbank.org; your response will help us to improve our website.

Thank you for participating in this survey! Your feedback is very helpful to us as we work to improve the site functionality on worldbank.org.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

The impact of poverty on basic education in South Africa: A systematic review of literature

2021, Systematic Reviews of Research in Basic Education in South Africa

Related Papers

otilia Chiramba

Kyla Meyerson

Derek Glover

Systematic Reviews of Research in Basic Education in South Africa

Alison Kearney

Francine De Clercq

Alessandro Besharati

Elaosi Vhurumuku

Disruptions in higher education: Impact and implication

Chinaza Mose

Teacher education is the nexus of the education system. In this chapter, we aim to add to the discourse on the decolonisation of teacher education in the South African context. Teacher education in HEIs prepares prospective teachers, the pre-service teachers, with the necessary training for desired educational goals. Hence, teachers have an important role to develop learners who can responsively fit and relevantly develop their immediate environments. Learners are to be provided with knowledge and skills that apply to the realities of their environment. This implies that teacher education must also prepare pre-service teachers with knowledge and skills that are appropriate for the tasks; therefore, the need to decolonise teacher education becomes necessary. The minds of students need to be decolonised for realities around them by the teacher educators who can be flexible in classroom teaching for the desired change in the society. The call for decolonisation of education in HEIs of South Africa has become prominent amongst scholars to dismantle the present Eurocentric-dominated knowledge and to engage students with a decolonised curriculum that will embrace and promote Africanisation and Indigenous Knowledge.

Jennifer FELDMAN

Race in Education

RELATED PAPERS

African Journal of Non-Profit Higher Education

Cornerstone Institute , Rudi Buys , Duncan Olivier , freeborn odiboh

Childhood Vulnerabilities in South Africa: Some Ethical Perspectives

Jan Grobbelaar

Sheila Trahar

Aslam Fataar

Nazeem Edwards

Higher Education for the Public Good

Sharon Subreenduth

Vivienne Bozalek

South African Journal of Higher Education

Felix Maringe

Alternation

Kelello Rakolobe

Unfinished Business: Faith Communities and Reconciliation in a Post-TRC Context

Engaging Higher Education Curricula - A critical citizenship perspective

Yusef Waghid

Perspectives in Education

Carina America

South African Journal of Education

Lee Rusznyak

Unlearning race

Dr Anita Jonker

Albert Tchey Agbenyegah

Mrs. Ndileleni Mudzielwana

Madeline Burgess , susan ledger , Alfred Masinire

Selina Palm

International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research

Gloria Erima

Emure Kadenge

Howard Maggott

Hennades Tabe

Education as Change

azeem Badroodien

Utilisation of South African Research on Higher Education

Soyiso Khetoa

IMF Working Papers

Montfort Mlachila

Shadrack Ramokgadi

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus

Puleng Sefalane-Nkohla

Ernst Conradie

Marien Graham

Handri Walters

Yolanda Mpu

Journal for Juridical Science

Roelf Reyneke

richard hlubi

Brenda Leibowitz

Fulufhelo Netswera

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

2.4 The Consequences of Poverty

Learning objectives.

• Describe the family and housing problems associated with poverty.
• Explain how poverty affects health and educational attainment.

Regardless of its causes, poverty has devastating consequences for the people who live in it. Much research conducted and/or analyzed by scholars, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations has documented the effects of poverty (and near poverty) on the lives of the poor (Lindsey, 2009; Moore, et. al., 2009; Ratcliffe & McKernan, 2010; Sanders, 2011). Many of these studies focus on childhood poverty, and these studies make it very clear that childhood poverty has lifelong consequences. In general, poor children are more likely to be poor as adults, more likely to drop out of high school, more likely to become a teenaged parent, and more likely to have employment problems. Although only 1 percent of children who are never poor end up being poor as young adults, 32 percent of poor children become poor as young adults (Ratcliffe & McKernan, 2010).

Poor children are more likely to have inadequate nutrition and to experience health, behavioral, and cognitive problems.

Kelly Short – Poverty: “Damaged Child,” Oklahoma City, OK, USA, 1936. (Colorized). – CC BY-SA 2.0.

A recent study used government data to follow children born between 1968 and 1975 until they were ages 30 to 37 (Duncan & Magnuson, 2011). The researchers compared individuals who lived in poverty in early childhood to those whose families had incomes at least twice the poverty line in early childhood. Compared to the latter group, adults who were poor in early childhood

• had completed two fewer years of schooling on the average;
• had incomes that were less than half of those earned by adults who had wealthier childhoods;
• received $826 more annually in food stamps on the average;
• were almost three times more likely to report being in poor health;
• were twice as likely to have been arrested (males only); and
• were five times as likely to have borne a child (females only).

We discuss some of the major specific consequences of poverty here and will return to them in later chapters.

Family Problems

The poor are at greater risk for family problems, including divorce and domestic violence. As Chapter 9 “Sexual Behavior” explains, a major reason for many of the problems families experience is stress. Even in families that are not poor, running a household can cause stress, children can cause stress, and paying the bills can cause stress. Families that are poor have more stress because of their poverty, and the ordinary stresses of family life become even more intense in poor families. The various kinds of family problems thus happen more commonly in poor families than in wealthier families. Compounding this situation, when these problems occur, poor families have fewer resources than wealthier families to deal with these problems.

Children and Our Future

Getting under Children’s Skin: The Biological Effects of Childhood Poverty

As the text discusses, childhood poverty often has lifelong consequences. Poor children are more likely to be poor when they become adults, and they are at greater risk for antisocial behavior when young, and for unemployment, criminal behavior, and other problems when they reach adolescence and young adulthood.

According to growing evidence, one reason poverty has these consequences is that it has certain neural effects on poor children that impair their cognitive abilities and thus their behavior and learning potential. As Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson (Duncan & Magnuson, 2011, p. 23) observe, “Emerging research in neuroscience and developmental psychology suggests that poverty early in a child’s life may be particularly harmful because the astonishingly rapid development of young children’s brains leaves them sensitive (and vulnerable) to environmental conditions.”

In short, poverty can change the way the brain develops in young children. The major reason for this effect is stress. Children growing up in poverty experience multiple stressful events: neighborhood crime and drug use; divorce, parental conflict, and other family problems, including abuse and neglect by their parents; parental financial problems and unemployment; physical and mental health problems of one or more family members; and so forth. Their great levels of stress in turn affect their bodies in certain harmful ways. As two poverty scholars note, “It’s not just that poverty-induced stress is mentally taxing. If it’s experienced early enough in childhood, it can in fact get ‘under the skin’ and change the way in which the body copes with the environment and the way in which the brain develops. These deep, enduring, and sometimes irreversible physiological changes are the very human price of running a high-poverty society” (Grusky & Wimer, 2011, p. 2).

One way poverty gets “under children’s skin” is as follows (Evans, et. al., 2011). Poor children’s high levels of stress produce unusually high levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and higher levels of blood pressure. Because these high levels impair their neural development, their memory and language development skills suffer. This result in turn affects their behavior and learning potential. For other physiological reasons, high levels of stress also affect the immune system, so that poor children are more likely to develop various illnesses during childhood and to have high blood pressure and other health problems when they grow older, and cause other biological changes that make poor children more likely to end up being obese and to have drug and alcohol problems.

The policy implications of the scientific research on childhood poverty are clear. As public health scholar Jack P. Shonkoff (Shonkoff, 2011) explains, “Viewing this scientific evidence within a biodevelopmental framework points to the particular importance of addressing the needs of our most disadvantaged children at the earliest ages.” Duncan and Magnuson (Duncan & Magnuson, 2011) agree that “greater policy attention should be given to remediating situations involving deep and persistent poverty occurring early in childhood.” To reduce poverty’s harmful physiological effects on children, Skonkoff advocates efforts to promote strong, stable relationships among all members of poor families; to improve the quality of the home and neighborhood physical environments in which poor children grow; and to improve the nutrition of poor children. Duncan and Magnuson call for more generous income transfers to poor families with young children and note that many European democracies provide many kinds of support to such families. The recent scientific evidence on early childhood poverty underscores the importance of doing everything possible to reduce the harmful effects of poverty during the first few years of life.

Health, Illness, and Medical Care

The poor are also more likely to have many kinds of health problems, including infant mortality, earlier adulthood mortality, and mental illness, and they are also more likely to receive inadequate medical care. Poor children are more likely to have inadequate nutrition and, partly for this reason, to suffer health, behavioral, and cognitive problems. These problems in turn impair their ability to do well in school and land stable employment as adults, helping to ensure that poverty will persist across generations. Many poor people are uninsured or underinsured, at least until the US health-care reform legislation of 2010 takes full effect a few years from now, and many have to visit health clinics that are overcrowded and understaffed.

As Chapter 12 “Work and the Economy” discusses, it is unclear how much of poor people’s worse health stems from their lack of money and lack of good health care versus their own behavior such as smoking and eating unhealthy diets. Regardless of the exact reasons, however, the fact remains that poor health is a major consequence of poverty. According to recent research, this fact means that poverty is responsible for almost 150,000 deaths annually, a figure about equal to the number of deaths from lung cancer (Bakalar, 2011).

Poor children typically go to rundown schools with inadequate facilities where they receive inadequate schooling. They are much less likely than wealthier children to graduate from high school or to go to college. Their lack of education in turn restricts them and their own children to poverty, once again helping to ensure a vicious cycle of continuing poverty across generations. As Chapter 10 “The Changing Family” explains, scholars debate whether the poor school performance of poor children stems more from the inadequacy of their schools and schooling versus their own poverty. Regardless of exactly why poor children are more likely to do poorly in school and to have low educational attainment, these educational problems are another major consequence of poverty.

Housing and Homelessness

The poor are, not surprisingly, more likely to be homeless than the nonpoor but also more likely to live in dilapidated housing and unable to buy their own homes. Many poor families spend more than half their income on rent, and they tend to live in poor neighborhoods that lack job opportunities, good schools, and other features of modern life that wealthier people take for granted. The lack of adequate housing for the poor remains a major national problem. Even worse is outright homelessness. An estimated 1.6 million people, including more than 300,000 children, are homeless at least part of the year (Lee, et. al., 2010).

Crime and Victimization

As Chapter 7 “Alcohol and Other Drugs” discusses, poor (and near poor) people account for the bulk of our street crime (homicide, robbery, burglary, etc.), and they also account for the bulk of victims of street crime. That chapter will outline several reasons for this dual connection between poverty and street crime, but they include the deep frustration and stress of living in poverty and the fact that many poor people live in high-crime neighborhoods. In such neighborhoods, children are more likely to grow up under the influence of older peers who are already in gangs or otherwise committing crime, and people of any age are more likely to become crime victims. Moreover, because poor and near-poor people are more likely to commit street crime, they also comprise most of the people arrested for street crimes, convicted of street crime, and imprisoned for street crime. Most of the more than 2 million people now in the nation’s prisons and jails come from poor or near-poor backgrounds. Criminal behavior and criminal victimization, then, are other major consequences of poverty.

Lessons from Other Societies

Poverty and Poverty Policy in Other Western Democracies

To compare international poverty rates, scholars commonly use a measure of the percentage of households in a nation that receive less than half of the nation’s median household income after taxes and cash transfers from the government. In data from the late 2000s, 17.3 percent of US households lived in poverty as defined by this measure. By comparison, other Western democracies had the rates depicted in the figure that follows. The average poverty rate of the nations in the figure excluding the United States is 9.5 percent. The US rate is thus almost twice as high as the average for all the other democracies.

This graph illustrates the poverty rates in western democracies (i.e., the percentage of persons living with less than half of the median household income) as of the late 2000s

Source: Data from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2011). Society at a glance 2011: OECD social indicators. Retrieved July 23, 2011, from http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/soc_glance-2011-en/06/02/index.html;jsessionid=erdqhbpb203ea.epsilon?contentType=&itemId=/content/chapter/soc_glance-2011-17-en&containerItemId=/content/se .

Why is there so much more poverty in the United States than in its Western counterparts? Several differences between the United States and the other nations stand out (Brady, 2009; Russell, 2011). First, other Western nations have higher minimum wages and stronger labor unions than the United States has, and these lead to incomes that help push people above poverty. Second, these other nations spend a much greater proportion of their gross domestic product on social expenditures (income support and social services such as child-care subsidies and housing allowances) than does the United States. As sociologist John Iceland (Iceland, 2006) notes, “Such countries often invest heavily in both universal benefits, such as maternity leave, child care, and medical care, and in promoting work among [poor] families…The United States, in comparison with other advanced nations, lacks national health insurance, provides less publicly supported housing, and spends less on job training and job creation.” Block and colleagues agree: “These other countries all take a more comprehensive government approach to combating poverty, and they assume that it is caused by economic and structural factors rather than bad behavior” (Block et, al., 2006).

The experience of the United Kingdom provides a striking contrast between the effectiveness of the expansive approach used in other wealthy democracies and the inadequacy of the American approach. In 1994, about 30 percent of British children lived in poverty; by 2009, that figure had fallen by more than half to 12 percent. Meanwhile, the US 2009 child poverty rate, was almost 21 percent.

Britain used three strategies to reduce its child poverty rate and to help poor children and their families in other ways. First, it induced more poor parents to work through a series of new measures, including a national minimum wage higher than its US counterpart and various tax savings for low-income workers. Because of these measures, the percentage of single parents who worked rose from 45 percent in 1997 to 57 percent in 2008. Second, Britain increased child welfare benefits regardless of whether a parent worked. Third, it increased paid maternity leave from four months to nine months, implemented two weeks of paid paternity leave, established universal preschool (which both helps children’s cognitive abilities and makes it easier for parents to afford to work), increased child-care aid, and made it possible for parents of young children to adjust their working hours to their parental responsibilities (Waldfogel, 2010). While the British child poverty rate fell dramatically because of these strategies, the US child poverty rate stagnated.

In short, the United States has so much more poverty than other democracies in part because it spends so much less than they do on helping the poor. The United States certainly has the wealth to follow their example, but it has chosen not to do so, and a high poverty rate is the unfortunate result. As the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman (2006, p. A25) summarizes this lesson, “Government truly can be a force for good. Decades of propaganda have conditioned many Americans to assume that government is always incompetent…But the [British experience has] shown that a government that seriously tries to reduce poverty can achieve a lot.”

Key Takeaways

• Poor people are more likely to have several kinds of family problems, including divorce and family conflict.
• Poor people are more likely to have several kinds of health problems.
• Children growing up in poverty are less likely to graduate high school or go to college, and they are more likely to commit street crime.

For Your Review

• Write a brief essay that summarizes the consequences of poverty.
• Why do you think poor children are more likely to develop health problems?

Bakalar, N. (2011, July 4). Researchers link deaths to social ills. New York Times , p. D5.

Block, F., Korteweg, A. C., & Woodward, K. (2006). The compassion gap in American poverty policy. Contexts, 5 (2), 14–20.

Brady, D. (2009). Rich democracies, poor people: How politics explain poverty . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Duncan, G. J., & Magnuson, K. (2011, winter). The long reach of early childhood poverty. Pathways: A Magazine on Poverty, Inequality, and Social Policy , 22–27.

Evans, G. W., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Klebanov, P. K. (2011, winter). Stressing out the poor: Chronic physiological stress and the income-achievement gap. Pathways: A Magazine on Poverty, Inequality, and Social Policy , 16–21.

Grusky, D., & Wimer, C.(Eds.). (2011, winter). Editors’ note. Pathways: A Magazine on Poverty, Inequality, and Social Policy , 2.

Iceland, J. (2006). Poverty in America: A handbook . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Krugman, P. (Krugman, 2006). Helping the poor, the British way. New York Times , p. A25.

Lee, B., Tyler, K. A., & Wright, J. D. ( 2010). The new homelessness revisited. Annual Review of Sociology, 36 , 501–521.

Lindsey, D. (2009). Child poverty and inequality: Securing a better future for America’s children . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Moore, K. A., Redd, Z., Burkhauser, M., Mbawa, K., & Collins, A. (2009). Children in poverty: Trends, consequences, and policy options . Washington, DC: Child Trends. Retrieved from http://www.childtrends.org/Files//Child_Trends-2009_04_07_RB_ChildreninPoverty.pdf .

Ratcliffe, C., & McKernan, S.-M. (2010). Childhood poverty persistence: Facts and consequences . Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

Russell, J. W. ( 2011). Double standard: Social policy in Europe and the United States (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Sanders, L. (2011). Neuroscience exposes pernicious effects of poverty. Science News, 179 (3), 32.

Shonkoff, J. P. (2011, winter). Building a foundation for prosperity on the science of early childhood development. Pathways: A Magazine on Poverty, Inequality, and Social Policy , 10–14.

Waldfogel, J. (2010). Britain’s war on poverty . New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

A revolution in helping Africa’s poor: Cash with no strings attached

CHAMBA, Malawi — The cyclone tore through Magret Frank’s village two years ago, ripping apart the thatched mud huts. She dragged her four children from their beds just before the roof beams collapsed, and their chickens and clothes were swept away into the howling night.

“I cried inside. But I am the mother — I have to be strong,” said Frank, who has had three homes that were destroyed by cyclones. “So I told them, as long as we have life, there is a new dawn.”

But now, like her neighbors, she is sleeping through storms in a new brick house with an iron roof. The constellation of new homes is the product of a pioneering program that is Africa’s largest cash giveaway as measured by amount per person. It is part of a project that aims to revolutionize the way that aid is given to the poor: in a lump sum of cash with no strings attached.

The program is run by GiveDirectly, an organization founded by graduates of MIT and Harvard who work with prominent economists to identify the most efficient ways to reduce poverty. Donors include Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and the founders of the graphic design tool Canva.

Lump sums are the most efficient way to give cash, according to a study of GiveDirectly programs released in December that compared the impact of three methods: in small transfers over 12 years; in small transfers over two years; or in a lump sum. Two years in, recipients of the lump sum have spent more money on health care, and more of their children have scored better on school exams, according to the study by MIT economics professor Abhijit Banerjee and others, including two GiveDirectly directors. The lump-sum recipients were also more likely to start a business and to make more money from their business.

The implications are far-reaching for families such as Frank’s.

After the 2022 cyclone destroyed her home, her family slept in a six-foot-square thatched kitchen largely open to the elements. She wove grass mats to sell for 50 cents each, trying to save enough to rebuild. She said she couldn’t even dream of a brick home. It took her weeks of saving to replace her plastic bucket, the lost item she most mourned.

Then a stranger arrived with a wild proposition: Each household, including Frank’s, would be given $800 — more than she would usually earn in two years. Like most of her neighbors, she used the money to build a new house.

Now cyclones can’t wreck Frank’s food stores, kill her chickens, or ruin her clothes and utensils. Village chief Edna Nikisi said the 2022 cyclone flattened 26 houses. This season, cyclones were strong, but they blew down only four homes, all old-style mud huts.

Global shift to cash

Frank benefited from a global push to distribute more aid in cash. Two decades ago, microfinance was the darling of the aid world. But it attracted predatory lenders and locked recipients into cycles of debt, and recent research has cast doubt over its long-term impact.

Traditionally, aid agencies distributed items such as food , livestock and laptops , but a frequent mismatch between donations and need meant items were often sold, stolen, broken or wasted, various studies found. So donors are increasingly moving to cash. Studies have repeatedly shown that cash is the most efficient form of aid when markets are functioning. New technology such as mobile money makes it easy to send cash directly to the world’s poorest. Governments in Togo, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico have all introduced small cash payments for poor families.

Although cash and voucher programs are increasingly popular , growing from $6.6 billion in 2020 to $10 billion in 2022, they still account globally for only about 5 percent of development aid and just under 20 percent of humanitarian aid, according to a 2023 report by the CALP Network, a consortium of 90 aid groups. Such programs typically give out tiny monthly sums. They also sometimes carry conditions — such as school enrollment or vaccinations — and often suffer from “ineffective targeting, unsustainable funding, and irregular payment cycles,” economists Adam Salifu and Kennedy Makafui Kufoalor said in a 2024 study.

Paul Niehaus, co-founder of GiveDirectly, says cash transfers can’t replace traditional aid to build roads, police forces or hospitals, but they do give recipients more choices. Poor people usually know their needs better than a bureaucrat or aid worker, he said, and lump sums offer opportunities that stipends don’t. Tiny sums, he said, can stave off starvation but not transform a life.

The debate on how to lift people out of poverty is most urgent in Africa. Overall, global wealth has quadrupled in the past 30 years, but a third of the people in Africa still live in extreme poverty — about 100 million more than in 1990, according to the World Bank . That is due partly to rising populations and partly to factors such as war, poor governance and climate change. The ranks of the poor have increased even as money has poured in: Aid to African countries totaled $53.5 billion in 2022 — slightly more than half the $100 billion that the Brookings Institution last year estimated would be needed for direct cash transfers to eradicate extreme poverty globally.

Malawi, where fog-cloaked hills encircle verdant fields, is often called a development puzzle. It is fertile and has never fought a war. Since 2005, wealthy countries have spent $16.5 billion on development assistance to Malawi. But poverty has not decreased , the World Bank says, noting that for every three Malawians who moved out of poverty be­tween 2010 and 2019, four were pushed back in by climate shocks.

Many families remain too poor to take advantage of newly built schools and clinics. Save the Children supports the school that serves Frank’s village, where shrieks of laughter drift among the neem trees. But when cyclones ruined books and uniforms, her children had to drop out because the items were too expensive for Frank to replace. Neither could she afford the bumpy motorbike ride down a long sandy track to a U.N.-supported clinic if her children contracted malaria or pneumonia sleeping outside.

Now, she can use both the school and the clinic.

Physician Alinafe Kachigwali said deaths at Kasiya Health Center in Khongoni have fallen significantly since the GiveDirectly disbursement began. Now, women can pay for transportation to the clinic or even to a referral hospital if needed, she said. Double the number of women are coming in for five-month prenatal checkups, hospital records show, meaning complications are being detected sooner.

Lessons learned

GiveDirectly calculates that, including operating costs, it would need nearly $4 billion to give $550 to every adult in Malawi living in extreme poverty. So far, the program has given out $50 million to 160,000 adults in the country.

At first, GiveDirectly tried to target the poorest villagers by disbursing money only to those living in thatched-roof homes. But now even those with brick houses get cash. That helps reduce potential conflicts or cheating.

And those with stable living situations are more likely to use the cash to create jobs. A lanky, nearsighted tailor bought glasses and a sewing machine that tripled his income. A shop owner converted a cement room into a raucous nursery for 56 children and now employs three teachers. A farmer bought a solar fridge to sell cold drinks and a solar phone charger that he now rents out.

Sometimes, there are problems, including incidents of fraud and theft by staffers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. In each case, GiveDirectly said, it hired external investigators and changed its systems. Outsiders also try to game the system by moving into qualifying villages, but GiveDirectly says a census conducted beforehand weeds them out.

Malawi’s finance minister, Simplex Chithyola, said the government was coordinating closely with GiveDirectly. “If you dictate and impose a particular service provision, it denies [poor families] the right to a choice,” he said. “The wish is to do as GiveDirectly is doing, but quite a number of people are in need.”