Seminars will not cure poverty
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By Marjut Lindberg
Well-being, equality, prosperity, good education, good health care, and a growing GDP are ideas that are linked with Finnish society. They are spoken of in speeches on solemn occasions, and they are repeated in seminars, where learned people with doctorates speak to well-dressed members of the upper middle class. Everyone nods in rhythm.
A shortage of money, an unpaid cell phone bill, unemployment, a temporary job that ends next week, a medicine bill, a treatment queue, problems at school, and malaise, are words that are used in different situations. They are spoken of in supermarket check-out lines, they go through people's minds on the Metro, or on local trains, and they are present in waiting rooms of public health clinics. The shoes of those who utter those words leave muddy prints on the floor.
In recent times, poverty, marginalisation, and social inequality have increasingly been acceptable topics in seminar rooms. A small, but vocal group of researchers has unyieldingly continued to ask, why a country experiencing the most rapid phase of wealth accumulation in its history cannot organise things so that the gap between those earning the least, and the majority, who are doing well, would not just keep on growing.
Last week, Professor Veli-Matti Ritakallio addressed a seminar of the Family Federation of Finland, taking up the plight of one group of people who suffer from the ravages of low income and unemployment - families with children. This group also includes families whose children have reached their teens.
Although in strictly monetary terms, income levels of families with teenage children are higher than in families where the children are very young, the consequences of a money shortage often feel more difficult. Youth in today's world have become more consumption-centred. Computers and mobile phones are part of the kids' everyday gear, along with brand-name clothing. A lack of them places a label on young people, separating them from their peers, where loneliness gives a push in the direction of a marginalisation spiral.
A young person who feels different is more susceptible to seeing his or her self-esteem bruised, and is not able to use all of his or her aptitude for learning. Schooling might be left unfinished, and it becomes necessary to boost self-esteem in ways that do not always improve opportunities for social advancement out of the meagre offerings of the childhood home.
Compared with the other Nordic Countries, Germany, the UK, and The Netherlands, only in Finland does the child allowance stop when the child turns 17. Nevertheless, the child allowance is of greater importance for a family's economy, the lower the family's income is otherwise. And the needs of a 17-year-old child are at a completely different level than those of a 7-year-old.
During the past ten years the Finnish national economy has grown at a dizzying pace. Economists feel that the success of business is the only way to guarantee that there is enough to be distributed to all. Tax cuts have been justified on the basis that the money will come back to benefit all, as purchasing power grows and competitiveness improves. Taxation policy has given wage earners a bit more room to manoeuvre, but for those living on public support, it is of little consequence, if the tax rate is one percentage point lower or higher than it is now.
There has been enough wealth to distribute, but the distribution has certainly not been equal. The wealthiest portion of the population has continued to become more wealthy, and the buying power of the euros held by the poorest - those who have lived in various subsidies and income transfers - has weakened, and income support has also declined.
An unemployed person with a child takes a great economic risk, because the lowest maternity and parental leave benefits are lower than unemployment compensation.
People in Finland resist talking about poverty, saying that we do not have the kind of absolute poverty that exists in the Third World. We do not have beggars, and people do not have to actually die of hunger.
In a welfare state, hunger is not the measure of poverty. Poverty among children and families is measured by whether or not they can afford hobbies, and live a life equivalent to that of their peers. Families with children can just barely withstand one poverty risk, such as temporary unemployment, but the illness of a parent, or of the only parent can push a family into the poverty pit. Finnish society has not managed to build a staircase to help people climb out of the hole.
Finns do not gather in the streets and markets to demand their rights, as the French do.
Finns will trudge past the breadlines and grumble quietly to a fellow ill-fated Finn about how unfair it all is. Finns are ashamed of poverty.
Improving the lot of those with the least income would require concrete action, a set sum of euros, and more precisely directed social policies. This will not emerge by sitting in a seminar. It must be decided in Parliament.
There will be elections again next winter, and the poor will have plenty of friends - for a few months.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.4.2006
MARJUT LINDBERG / Helsingin Sanomat
marjut.lindberg@hs.fi
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| 11.4.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 Seminars will not cure poverty |
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