美国国家公共电台 NPR Cash Aid Could Solve Poverty — But There's A Catch

 

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

It's an emerging idea in the fight against global poverty. Instead of offering poor people traditional aid, such as seeds or job training, why not just give cash? NPR's Nurith Aizenman traveled to Zambia where they've just finished a major experiment.

(SOUNDBITE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN PLAYING)

NURITH AIZENMAN, BYLINE¹: We're in a classroom in a village called Yuka. Outside, the kids are at recess². In here, the room is crammed³ with adult women, all listening intently as an official at the teacher's desk calls out names from a list. He gets to number 76.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Likezo Nasilele.

AIZENMAN: Likezo Nasilele.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Likezo?

AIZENMAN: A petite 30-year-old in a green sarong and flip-flops steps forward. The official reaches into a metal box and starts handing her cash.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Three, four, five, six...

AIZENMAN: Pocketing the money, Nasilele is all smiles.

LIKEZO NASILELE: (Laughter).

AIZENMAN: These payouts have changed her family's life. She's been getting up to $18 every other month for over two years. Before that, she and her husband couldn't even afford to feed their kids properly. But they were able to use the cash to start a bunch of businesses. We've more than doubled our money, she tells me, speaking in the local language, Lozi.

NASILELE: (Through interpreter) We are now all set.

AIZENMAN: Hundreds of other couples tell a similar story. The payouts were an experiment by the government. Officials wanted to see what would happen if they gave some of the country's poorest young families a steady stream of cash. The results have been so impressive, the government has now decided⁴ to massively scale up cash aid - with one caveat⁵. They're only going to give the money to people who can't really work - the elderly, the sick, single moms with lots of kids. They're not going to give it to the kinds of families that made up the vast majority of this experimental program, families like Nasilele's, where there's both a mom and a dad who's able-bodied. Esther Ngambi is the official in charge of the new cash program.

ESTHER NGAMBI: We had to strike a balance. What was going to be socially acceptable?

AIZENMAN: Socially acceptable - this is a story of how our gut⁶ feelings about which poor people deserve our help - and which do not - can be so entrenched⁷, they led a government to ignore the radical⁸ lesson of its own experiment, to take a pass on a transformative solution to poverty. When the possibility of cash aid was first floated in Zambia, it seemed totally implausible.

NGAMBI: People would say, you're just putting money into a bottomless pit.

AIZENMAN: The year was 2009. Researchers and donors⁹ were pushing the idea. But in Zambia, officials were wary¹⁰ of giving people money with no strings¹¹ attached.

NGAMBI: Maybe they will use it for beer, and it won't be put to good use.

AIZENMAN: And even if people didn't waste the money on vices¹², as soon as they spent it, wouldn't they be right back where they started, needing more? So officials settled on two pilot programs. The first gave the money to any mother of a young child, like Kezo Nasilele from the school. The second targeted people who couldn't work - the disabled, the elderly. And the government commissioned a study of these pilots. Ashu Handa conducted it. He's a professor at the University of North Carolina. He found that people didn't waste the money, but he notes that Zambian officials also insisted on checking...

ASHU HANDA: That in fact the money is used not just responsibly but actually productively.

AIZENMAN: Are people able to invest it in ways that make them more money, maybe even grow the wider economy? A few years later, when those results came in...

HANDA: Holy smoke - they were incredible.

AIZENMAN: In both versions of the program, the recipients¹³ managed to boost their spending, which is effectively a measure of their income, by more than 50 percent over what the government had given them. That's head and shoulders above the returns from traditional aid.

HANDA: You know, I've sort of never seen impacts so large in my life (laughter).

AIZENMAN: And the young families, because they were able-bodied, achieved this by doing something remarkable¹⁴. They became entrepreneurial.

AIZENMAN: Is it those huts over there or even further?

I get a feel for this when I walk home with Nasilele to meet her husband and four kids.

CHIPOPA LIONI: (Laughter).

AIZENMAN: They live in a round hut made of sticks and mud. Before the cash program, the couple mostly worked day jobs in construction, pulling in about $30 a month - not even enough to cover basics, says Nasilele - soap, shoes, food.

NASILELE: (Through interpreter) We would have only one meal a day.

AIZENMAN: And her husband, Chipopa Lioni, says he had an idea for how to make more money.

LIONI: (Through interpreter) A business to sell mats, reed mats.

AIZENMAN: He pulls one of the mats out to show me.

LIONI: (Speaking Lozi).

(SOUNDBITE OF MAT DROPPING)

AIZENMAN: It's about 6 feet by 10, woven from the reeds that grow in the marshes¹⁵ around here. People use them to sit on, as fences, walls for their homes. In this area, they only sell for like 30 cents. But Lioni thought, if he could buy up a bunch, rent a canoe and paddle them across the marshes to this big town, he could probably sell them for much more.

LIONI: (Through interpreter) I figured we would need about $120.

AIZENMAN: So when the couple found out Nasilele was going to get the government payments, they decided to save every penny for a mat business. It took more than a year.

Do you remember when your wife came home from getting that last payment?

LIONI: (Laughter).

(Through interpreter) Yes, I can remember that day well. I said to her, now everything's going to be OK.

AIZENMAN: And he was right. Their first trip selling mats in the big town, they turned a profit of $340. Now, it takes weeks to purchase enough mats. On their last trip, their canoe capsized in choppy waters, and they lost every single one. Still, when I ask Lioni, now that the cash program is being phased out, will you be OK? He shrugs¹⁶ it off.

LIONI: (Through interpreter) We're not worried that we'll ever go back to that life. Now we're on another level.

AIZENMAN: The researcher, Ashu Handa, says the implications of this dynamic were huge. Forty percent of Zambia's population is extremely poor. Here was a way to help them graduate out of poverty.

HANDA: That seems to be, in some sense, the magic bullet. Like, this is it.

AIZENMAN: Best of all, Zambia can afford it. They've got vast reserves of resources like copper¹⁷. So why aren't they going for it? Ngambi, the social welfare official, says there'd been gripes from the public - young women collecting a government check just for having a kid? People were calling the women divas.

NGAMBI: Yeah, we're turning them into these divas.

AIZENMAN: As for the dads, if they can work, why should they be on the program? But most important, Ngambi says, Zambia's top leaders shared that queasiness¹⁸. They're putting in tens of millions of dollars to support people who are not able to work. But Ngambi says it was clear they would never back a plan to include able-bodied people.

NGAMBI: No, we were not going to get support because everybody would be saying that you're trying to give money to lazy people and that you're encouraging laziness.

AIZENMAN: That view you change, she adds, but she's not sure she'll be alive to see it.

Nurith Aizenman, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF NOMO'S "SARVODAYA")

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 recess   

n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处）

参考例句：

• The chairman of the meeting announced a ten-minute recess.会议主席宣布休会10分钟。
• Parliament was hastily recalled from recess.休会的议员被匆匆召回开会。

3 crammed   

adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式)

参考例句：

• He crammed eight people into his car. 他往他的车里硬塞进八个人。
• All the shelves were crammed with books. 所有的架子上都堆满了书。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 caveat   

n.警告； 防止误解的说明

参考例句：

• I would offer a caveat for those who want to join me in the dual calling.为防止发生误解，我想对那些想要步我后尘的人提出警告。
• As I have written before,that's quite a caveat.正如我以前所写，那确实是个警告。

6 gut   

n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏

参考例句：

• It is not always necessary to gut the fish prior to freezing.冷冻鱼之前并不总是需要先把内脏掏空。
• My immediate gut feeling was to refuse.我本能的直接反应是拒绝。

7 entrenched   

adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯)

参考例句：

• Television seems to be firmly entrenched as the number one medium for national advertising.电视看来要在全国广告媒介中牢固地占据头等位置。
• If the enemy dares to attack us in these entrenched positions,we will make short work of them.如果敌人胆敢进攻我们固守的阵地，我们就消灭他们。

8 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

9 donors   

n.捐赠者( donor的名词复数 )；献血者；捐血者；器官捐献者

参考例句：

• Please email us to be removed from our active list of blood donors. 假如你想把自己的名字从献血联系人名单中删去，请给我们发电子邮件。
• About half this amount comes from individual donors and bequests. 这笔钱大约有一半来自个人捐赠及遗赠。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 wary   

adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的

参考例句：

• He is wary of telling secrets to others.他谨防向他人泄露秘密。
• Paula frowned,suddenly wary.宝拉皱了皱眉头，突然警惕起来。

11 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

12 vices   

缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳

参考例句：

• In spite of his vices, he was loved by all. 尽管他有缺点，还是受到大家的爱戴。
• He vituperated from the pulpit the vices of the court. 他在教堂的讲坛上责骂宫廷的罪恶。

13 recipients   

adj.接受的；受领的；容纳的；愿意接受的n.收件人；接受者；受领者；接受器

参考例句：

• The recipients of the prizes had their names printed in the paper. 获奖者的姓名登在报上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The recipients of prizes had their names printed in the paper. 获奖者名单登在报上。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

14 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

15 marshes   

n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Cows were grazing on the marshes. 牛群在湿地上吃草。
• We had to cross the marshes. 我们不得不穿过那片沼泽地。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 shrugs   

n.耸肩（以表示冷淡，怀疑等）( shrug的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany shrugs off this criticism. 匈牙利总理久尔恰尼对这个批评不以为然。 来自互联网
• She shrugs expressively and takes a sip of her latte. 她表达地耸肩而且拿她的拿铁的啜饮。 来自互联网

17 copper   

n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的

参考例句：

• The students are asked to prove the purity of copper.要求学生们检验铜的纯度。
• Copper is a good medium for the conduction of heat and electricity.铜是热和电的良导体。

18 queasiness   

n.恶心

参考例句：

• This medicine will counteract the queasiness caused by the antibiotics. 这种药会抑制抗生素引起的反胃。 来自辞典例句
• Perhaps his queasiness is just a sign's coming down with bird flu. 它确定不了，也许，感觉恶心只是得了禽流感的征兆。 来自互联网