Les pauvres s'achètent une télé, et ne se nourrissent pas - Duflot

It is not because they spend all the rest on other necessities. In Udaipur, India, for example, we find that the typical poor household could spend up to 30 percent more on food, if it completely cut expenditures on alcohol, tobacco, and festivals. The poor seem to have many choices, and they don't choose to spend as much as they can on food. Equally remarkable is that even the money that people do spend on food is not spent to maximize the intake of calories or micronutrients. Studies have shown that when very poor people get a chance to spend a little bit more on food, they don't put everything into getting more calories.

But the poor may well be more skeptical about supposed opportunities and the possibility of any radical change in their lives. They often behave as if they think that any change that is significant enough to be worth sacrificing for will simply take too long. This could explain why they focus on the here and now, on living their lives as pleasantly as possible and celebrating when occasion demands it.

Why had he bought all these things if he felt the family did not have enough to eat? He laughed, and said, "Oh, but television is more important than food!"


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Les auteurs discutent de l’existence de trappes à pauvreté liées à un manque de nourriture et soulignent que le problème n’est pas tant le manque de nourriture que la propension des populations pauvres à ne pas consommer – lorsqu’elles en ont l’opportunité – les aliments les plus nutritifs et les meilleurs pour la santé. Les principales explications sont que les résultats d’une meilleure nutrition ne sont pas immédiatement visibles et que certaines normes sociales conduisent à allouer les augmentations de revenu à des dépenses « cérémoniales » ou à des « loisirs ».