Reaction Paper

Question 1:
Poverty trap, as explained in the article is when “the poor get poorer, and the rich get
richer and eat even better, and get stronger and even richer, and the gap increasing. The most
frequently cited root causes of a poverty trap is the inability of the poor to feed themselves
properly. They cannot afford to eat enough and this makes them less productive and keeps them
poor.” In the case of Pak Solhin, he became unemployed and had no money to buy enough food.
The lack of food made him weak and he was also depressed. The food he consume was barely
enough for him to have the strength to catch fish from the river bank and it provides no extra
strength for him to be able to work, making him trapped in poverty. But it was later discussed
that the main problem in his case is not the lack of calories but the fact that he was fired, too old
to be hired again and his depression that made it too difficult for him to do anything at all.

Nutrition play a role in the concept of poverty in a way that it is converted into energy
and strength that people use to work which make them earn money to get them out of the poverty
line. In the case of unborn babies and young children, as mentioned in the reading, “a child who
got the proper nutrients in utero or during early childhood will earn more money every year of
his or her life, which adds up to large benefits over a lifetime.”

Question 2:
The lack of food contributes to a problem of poverty to certain extent; however, most
people including very poor people can afford to earn and eat enough to be functional. According
to the article, the lack of food becomes factor only due to the unequal distribution of available
food such as disasters and famines. Aside from those situations, there are different factors that
contribute to poverty: the lack of knowledge about micronutrients and the consideration for
tradition or custom.
 The former means that since poor people do not know the effect of nutrients, they
tend to prefer better taste than effective nutrient. The inadequate understanding about food
occurs because people become suspicious of others when it comes to diet and also it is difficult
to acquire information about nutrients throughout personal experience. For instance, in the case
of Iodine, it is impossible to observe the change in a short period of time and the change may
occur after several generations, which makes people choose better taste as a temporary
enjoyment.
The latter, the consideration for tradition and custom, means that poor people in
developing countries believe that there are things that are more important than food and tend to
spend a large amount of money on traditional events and customs in order to save face of the
family. In South Africa, for example, there is a tradition that when elderly people die, they pay
all the money they accumulated in their lifetime to have a funeral. This lead the country’s
situation worse during HIV/AIDS epidemic, because a number of young and working age adults
who did not have much savings died, yet the family had to pay a lot for the funeral. This made
the family devastated and made them in long-term poverty because some children even had to
drop out of school.
In short, even though the lack of food partly contributes to a problem of poverty,
there are more significant factors of poverty in the developing word. Thus, it is said that the lack
of food can be a problem only when the distribution of food is unequal and the knowledge about
nutrients and tra

Question 3:
Similar to the situation of India, it is believed that the a significant portion of
impoverished Filipinos do not experience or fall within the nutrition-based poverty trap zone,
that they are hindered by a different set of factors, such as the case of Pak Solhin who was
trapped in the poverty zone not because of his lack of calories, because he was being provided
the necessary amount of free food from both The Rakshin Program and his brother but due to an
inability to secure a job. According to the Asian Development Bank, “the main reason why
poverty reduction in the Philippines has been slow is the failure of the economy to grow and
generate employment. Employment opportunities have failed to keep up with this growth in the
labor force,” (Teves, 2009) L​ow or no income leads to low savings, low savings lead to low
investments, low investments lead to low production, and low production leads right back to low
incomes thereby creating a poverty trap separate from that of nutrition.
It is also important to note that Filipinos spend roughly only 39.38% of their income for
food and 41.89 on other necessities such as utilities. This means they spend almost 19% of their
remaining income on miscellaneous goods such as alcoholic beverages, tobacco, recreation and
restaurants and hotels (Philippine Statistics Authority, 2016). It may be possible that the average
impoverished Filipino family is capable of providing themselves the proper amount of calories
and nutrients to escape the poverty trap but chooses not to.
Another thing to note from the study conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority is
that while there was a growth rate of 7.1 % from the first quarter of 2014 in comparison to that of
2015 the rate of growth for food and non alcoholic beverages rose only 5.9 %. On the other side
Alcoholic Beverages rose a staggering 31.8 %, Recreation and Culture grew 9.7 % and
Restaurants and Hotels by 8.6%. It seems that with a rise of income Filipinos choose to change
the composition of their basket of goods. Instead of investing their complete growth into their
nutrition and escape from poverty, they chose to spend it on more expensive and unnecessary
consumables.
In summary, while one cannot completely discard the possibility that the lack of progress
in the country is due to nutrition-based poverty trap, we can assume that those affected by it are
a significantly smaller percentage than those that are trapped due to other issues such as high
unemployment or a lack of proper education on nutrients, budgeting and long term health
investments.

References:
 Teves, M. (2009). ADB warns Philippines against getting stuck in "poverty trap”.
Retrieved from http://news.abs-cbn.com/nation/12/11/09/adb-warns-philippines-against-getting-
stuck-poverty-trap
Philippine Statistics Authority (2016). Results from the 2015 Family Income and
Expenditure Survey. Retrieved from https://psa.gov.ph/content/results-2015-family-income-and
-expenditure-survey
Philippine Statistics Authority (2015). Household Final Consumption Expenditure.
Retrieved from http://nap.psa.gov.ph/sna/2015/1st2015/2015hfce1.asp