We are the Poor

Mag-uno man sila sa suyod? We still can see in the news feeds and even in our own town a number of people roaming around and doing their activities outside their houses even with the strong warnings of the local and national governments to stay at home. In fact, going out is considered as the majority’s contribution in spreading the virus.

There are reports that the poorest of the poor are the ones to break the protocol especially in social distancing and home quarantine. There are even posts in the social media sites condemning them as the culprits of the local transmissions. But haven’t we looked in their situations? What would they do inside a dilapidated house with walls made of light materials and no plumbing?

Report of the Philippine Statistics Authority states that the full year 2018 poverty incidence among population, or the proportion of poor Filipinos whose per capita income is not sufficient to meet their basic food and non-food needs, was estimated at 16.6 percent. This translates to 17.6 million Filipinos who lived below the poverty threshold estimated at PhP 10,727, on average, for a family of five per month in 2018.

In its Macro Poverty Outlook for East Asia and the Pacific report, the World Bank projected poverty incidence in the Philippines at 20.8 percent by the end of 2019, down from 26 percent in 2015, the latest comparable full-year date from the Philippine government.

Based on the results of the 2008 Annual Poverty Indicators Survey, 36 percent of families in the bottom 30% income stratum do not have electricity in their homes compared to 8 percent among families in the upper 70% income stratum. Eighty four percent of the total families have access to a safe source of water supply. Considered as clean and safe sources of water supply are community water system and protected well. The remaining 16 percent of families obtain their water from sources considered unsafe, such as unprotected well (5%), developed spring (4%), undeveloped spring (2%), river, stream, pond, lake or dam (1%), rainwater (less than one percent), and tanker truck or peddler (3%).

These are purely statistics. But these numbers have faces, needs and feelings. We can see them on the news trying to buy food in a congested marketplace; we can observe them on their front yards drinking the hours away since they do not have anything to do inside the small space they call a house; and we can hear them singing through the karaoke since that’s the only thing they know on how to cope. We see them apprehended on checkpoints since they are trying to look for food for the family.

Decades of research have already documented that people who deal with stressors such as low family income, discrimination, limited access to health care, exposure to crime are highly susceptible to physical and mental disorders, low educational attainment, and low IQ scores, noted Farah (2015), a University of Pennsylvania professor.

A major implication of the cognitive neuroscience research on development, Farah said, is that it challenges the widely held notion that the poor have only themselves to blame for their circumstances.

Surveys have shown that a very common view about why poor people are poor is that they don’t try hard enough, they’re irresponsible, they make poor decisions, they don’t stay in school, et cetera. But … neurons don’t deserve blame or credit. They don’t expend effort. They don’t have good or bad behaviors. They just behave according to the laws of the natural world.

Certain nutrients have greater effects on brain development than do others. These include protein, energy, certain fats, iron, zinc, copper, iodine, selenium, vitamin A, choline, and folate. Circuit-specific behavioral and neuro-imaging tests are being developed for use in progressively younger infants to more accurately assess the effect of nutrient deficits both while the subject is deficient and after recovery from the deficiency (Georgieff, 2007). Most of these nutrients are absent in a poor man’s diet.

Therefore, the chemical component of the brains was underdeveloped due to the situations and environment the poor has been exposed to.

Yet, the well-off and the middle class would insist: What about common sense? Does it need a lot of well-developed neurons to function and follow simple rules?

Hunger increases your impulsiveness and reduces your ability to make long-term decisions. This is why you shouldn’t shop on an empty stomach. A complex web of signals throughout the brain and body drives how and when we feel hungry. And even the question of why we feel hungry is not always simple to answer. The drive to eat comes not only from the body's need for energy, but also due to self-preservation. We have to eat so to survive.

In this present situation where the pandemic continues to claim lives, the LEARNED individuals must work hand in hand with those who are trying to live. The culture of blame is another intellectual deficit. That is the reason why HELP from the neighbors can be considered as one of the solutions for people to get by. Indifference and personal comparisons are silent killers.