Article: is there a nutrion-based poverty trap?

In this post I would like to direct the reader to a interesting article of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, found here. It starts with the notion that their may be 1 billion hungry people in the world, which may lead to a nutrion-based poverty trap. However, is this really true?

The authors of the article fight the idea of a nutrition-based poverty trap. This poverty trap states that the human body needs a certain amount of food (calories) to be productive. However, when you are very poor you may not be able to buy enough food. Hence, you get less productive as you body deteriorates by the shortage of food.  Being less productive the poor will earn even less and can buy even less food. But if people get richer, they are able to buy more food. Hence their strength increases and will be more productive, and start to earn more. Thus we have a poverty trap: the poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer. 

So the solution to this would be simple just provide the poor with food. Which is basically the idea of many plans to help the poor. However the authors of the article argue that the shortage of food actually might not be a problem.

eggs and bananas: diet for the poor..

First, the argue that in theory there is enough food in the world to feed all people. And that in theory even the poorest people could afford food that would give them 2400 calories a day, which is approximately the amount a grown person need. However, this would mean that these poor people could only eat eggs and bananas.

Second, when looking at the spending of poor people, a great amount of money goes to non-essential things like parties, alcohol and tobacco. Studies even have shown that when people got a chance to spend a little bit more on food, they did not maximise the amount of calories, instead they bought better tasting food.  

This implicates that the poor might eat less than we think is appropriate. However, this is not because they have no choice. Is this behaviour then irrational? Well let us consider two things.

One, people might not know that eating better might help them earn more because of lack of knowledge, which seems to be the case. Better educating people might be a solution then. Two, people need also pleasure in their lives. A life consisting of no-parties, no entertainment and only eating eggs and bananas might be no life at all. Hence, in more economics terms, the utility of a person might not only be based on their income but may also be depended on the enjoyment of life. In this light, the behaviour of these poor people might not be that irrational, because what is life if you cannot enjoy it ?