Care for the poor is an essential part of a virtuous life in the Jewish and Christian traditions, and other traditions as well.
In the book of Deuteronomy, in the Old Testament, Moses instructs the Israelites to give generously to those in their community, with the reminder that “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.” This is repeated in the New Testament when, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus, when being anointed in Bethany, tells His disciples that “the poor you will always have with you.”
This command came with rules that govern how the poor are treated and what is asked of them, and is predicated on truths about the world and human nature. The first is that people have inherent dignity. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this stems from our creation; we are imago Dei, image-bearers. As such, we are created to work, and in this serve ourselves and others and bring God glory. Thomas Aquinas saw that our telos, purpose, is to understand and contemplate God, and that we achieve happiness when we fulfill our God-given purpose. That includes our work in the world. Only God can create ex nihilo, but we are commanded to create something out of something. We are to use our gifts and skills to serve one another, and through this, we are fulfilled and can create greater material abundance.
Work, human dignity, cooperation, and human flourishing are key assumptions and features in ancient solutions to poverty assistance and alleviation. Those who have more are asked to give generously to those who are vulnerable, but those who are vulnerable are asked to make productive contributions, if they are able. The story of Ruth demonstrates the inherent value of work both for the haves and the have-nots.
Ruth was a Moabite widow who, with her mother-in-law, Naomi, returned to Bethlehem and relied on gleaning to survive. Gleaning is the process of gathering leftover grains from the fields after the harvesters have finished, and was provided for through gleaning laws as part of the ancient Israelite social safety net. The productive capacity of the fields was necessary both for the economy and for gleaning. The productive capacity of Ruth and the poor in general was required to participate in the gleaning, creating value by picking up food which would otherwise be impractical to gather. The initiative and effort of both parties are key to poverty alleviation.
This is one example of a local solution to poverty that required the poor to be active participants in the charity they received. The goal was not dependency, nor was it an unintended consequence. Some would never be able to even work in the field for charity due to physical limitations. This is also true today. We should not require work if one is not able to work, but they are few and far between. Able-bodied people were required to work to reap the benefits of the productive labor of others.
In ancient Israel, it was to be expected that there were many poor people and little income mobility, particularly for women and children. This was many centuries before the onset of the first Industrial Revolution. Yet the mechanisms by which societies cared for the poor worked because they treated the poor with dignity and asked them to be active participants in the local social safety net.
Scholar Glenn Sunshine argues that four principles made these ancient poverty alleviation systems effective, and they are the importance of work, giving, moral proximity, and subsidiarity. We’ve addressed the importance of work and giving. Relationships determine moral proximity. We have a greater moral responsibility to those who are close to us.
Remember, Moses commanded the Israelites to care for the poor in their covenant community. Today, if your house burns down or you lose your job, the local church or community has the highest moral responsibility to care for you during this time and others in the community who are poor for various reasons, whether it’s long-term or short-term poverty. Subsidiarity means that solutions are best at the most local level possible and has roots in Catholic social teaching and the natural law philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.
Now, let’s fast forward to the modern welfare state. One does not have to be Jewish or Christian to apply these timeless and practical solutions, as they are predicated on the realities of human nature and economics. Instead, poverty alleviation in the United States is ineffective mainly because it creates negative incentives to work and discourages the poor from escaping poverty. Global humanitarian aid is riddled with the same perverse incentives.
Moral proximity and subsidiarity help us see that we need to know the poor and the conditions that lead to their poverty to support them best now and help them permanently escape these conditions. This requires relationships. American welfare creates dependencies and discourages income mobility as it forces the poor to avoid the “cliff effect,” where a sudden reduction in government benefits results from a slight increase in earnings. Moreover, it is a bureaucratic behemoth and can only work by treating individuals as generic, which they are not. It breaks up families and discourages advancements in human productivity.
Welfare and charity are a necessary but insufficient condition for permanently escaping poverty. If someone is hungry, homeless, or in need of medical care, we can and should help them. Yet, the only long-term solution to poverty is economic growth fostered by capitalism, the most productive and extraordinary poverty elimination program the world has ever seen. Moral philosopher Adam Smith saw the potential of capitalism when he wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, in 1776.
At the time of the book’s release, average life expectancy was under 40, which was low because of high child and maternal mortality rates. For most of human history, child mortality was 48 percent. Healthcare was managed at home with no specialists and no access to antibiotics or over-the-counter pain relievers. Food abundance was tied to weather conditions, and diseases like smallpox, dysentery, and typhoid fever ravaged the populations. War was a typical and expected part of life, as was illiteracy. Most women could not vote, and slavery was common. Poverty was miserable and normal; it was an exception to be wealthy and have a long life.
Today, global child mortality is about 4 percent, global literacy rates are almost 90 percent, and for the first time in human history, we can reasonably predict an end to sustained poverty. Adam Smith understood why we could achieve such colossal gains in human prosperity and well-being, and it serves as an essential lesson for poverty alleviation and charity. Smith argued that the wealth of a nation is tied to worker productivity. When we can divide the labor among people, we create the conditions for specialization, which allows us to learn, innovate, and improve our skills. Specialization allows us to lower the opportunity costs of production, and trade will enable us to rely on the skills of others. Smith saw that the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market, or the number of trading partners we can access.
Advances in worker productivity and access to markets enable people to escape the chains of poverty. There is a role for charity and a local safety net, but it must be predicated on these truths and respect the dignity of the individual and the existential value of work. We must think about breaking the dependencies so often found in charity and welfare, and focus on the interdependencies of people through the market.
Ancient lessons in poverty can take us a long way in reforming how we both view the poor and make efforts to help them escape poverty.