Portfolios of the Poor, Chapter 2

Portfolios of the Poor highlights the need to focus on cash flows of the poor, rather than their assets, because that is how the poor see it. That makes sense. At the most basic level, you need cash—not an equity line—to get food. We chafes against the thought of paying for a savings program; discipline or education should be enough, we intuit. Or browbeating. Of course, I take something like a bank account for granted.

I think this is like Paul Farmer complicating the distinction between treatment and prevention. Savings is like prevention: we don't need fancy and expensive drugs (or financial tools) if we can convince people to adopt habits that will keep them from contracting AIDS (or debts) in the first place. We should make some ecological interventions, which we can feel good about. Dig a well, provide condoms, make posters (give to Kiva). But I've missed a basic dignity/autonomy component to providing treatment (or financial services, even if I think the ledgers shows they're treading water). Treatment and cash-flow-oriented microfinance acknowledge the dignity, rights, expectations, humanity of the poor, and allow them more space for hope in the present, rather than the future.