Photo Credit: Prince Roy

If you want to help Indian children, please don’t give to child beggars.

Of all of the advice I might give to individuals traveling to India – or most of the developing world – the most important one would be

Don’t give to beggars

I realize this sounds cruel and callous. It feels cruel and callous to me, even when I know it’s the best choice – especially when I’m sitting in an air-conditioned car in India, idling at a red light, and  people who are clearly poor, clearly in need come to the window begging for a small handout. Just a few rupees, which, to an American or other Western traveler, is next to nothing. Change I probably wouldn’t bother to pickup off the ground if I saw it. Can you ignore such clear need without guilt creeping up on you?

I can’t. I feel guilty for my Western extravagance when I see the numerous beggars in India. Very guilty. But I still don’t give them any money. The reason is because I know – from a few simple economic principles – that giving to beggars is not a particularly noble deed. In fact, I’d say that giving to beggars in a poor, developing country – like India – is a bad act. It certainly doesn’t seem that way – and I don’t think givers give with bad intentions – but it’s still a problem. Let me explain…

Effective Giving – opportunity costs

When economists talk about any activity – related to money or not – we always discuss the opportunity cost of the action. The opportunity cost of an action is simply what you give up doing in order to do that action. If you spend ten minutes reading this post, that’s ten minutes that you can’t spend reading a book or another website. We live in a world constrained by scarcity – limited money, limited time, limited resources. And, of course, the amount of money you can give to charity is limited.

If you chose to give a rupee to a beggar, the opportunity cost of that act of charity is all the things you could have done with that rupee. The opportunity cost includes all of the other charitable giving you might have done with the coin – other individuals and organizations that might need the help that that rupee can bring.

I believe that everyone has a duty to help the less fortunate. But you should not just give – you should give effectively.

Giving effectively does not mean simply giving to the poorest beggars you happen to run into during a day of travel in a developing country. While I think the most effective use of your charity dollars is in giving to particular organizations (more on that in a bit), I understand the wish many people have to donate directly to individuals – but those individuals should not be the ones you see begging on the street.

Photo credit: Ahron de Leeuw

Giving to Individuals – rent exhaustion and incentives

When I’ve asked friends and relatives why they give to beggars, I normally hear responses discussing guilt over seeing the poor, a desire to help a person (especially a child or mother) they saw in need, or a feeling that it was a small thing they could do that would mean much more to the needy person.

But in their desire to help out others, they fail to realize they’re doing exactly the opposite by giving to beggars.

First, consider the incentives giving to children beggars creates – particularly the charity that rich travelers in developing countries can (and often do) give. Leaving aside discussions of mafia gangs and the deliberate crippling of children (as I’m not 100% sure this occurs, and have no information on how common it might or might not be), if you give a significant amount of money to a begging child (say $1), you’ve just given his parents (or the group he works for) a strong incentive to keep him begging, rather than in school or, at least, learning some sort of trade.

Second, there is a strong problem of rent exhaustion in begging. Rent exhaustion (or rent seeking) is an economic concept regarding the way individuals or organizations will struggle with each other in order to get a “free lunch” – with the cost of the struggle eating away much of the gain from the “free lunch”. The classic example of this in the study of political economy comes from lobbies, where competing industries spend significant amounts of time and money in order to influence favorable legislature. It’s worth paying $3 million dollars in lobbying costs, after all, if it means you get a $3.2 million dollar contract.

The same problem occurs in begging activities. A person who could earn a dollar & a half a day in manual labor or a set of small businesses (as much of the urban poor does – see Banerjee & Duflo’s excellent and accessible paper “The Economic Lives of the Poor” for more information) might give up his work if he can earn two dollars a day begging from rich foreigners. Moreover, vicious fights – or extensive bribes – might be required to keep a prime begging spot (just as with lobbies & legislature), further eroding any “free lunch” a beggar receives from strangers.

So what are you to do, if you want to give to an individual, but shouldn’t give to a beggar?

Give to individuals who busy working and aren’t expecting anything from you. I first read of this idea in Tyler Cowen’s book, Discover Your Inner Economist (highly recommended), and the economic reasoning here is completely sound. As Banerjee & Duflo’s paper makes entirely too clear, the vast majority of the poor (those living on $2 or less per day) and the extremely poor (those living on less than $1 per day) work hard, often at multiple jobs while trying to send their children to school.

By giving in this manner – to people who clearly need help, but aren’t expecting it,  you aren’t requiring the poor to spend costly time begging in order to get help. No perverse incentives (make more money begging if you keep your kids out of school) have been created, and, since the working poor have not spent any time in seeking alms, there has been no cost to them in terms of rent-seeking. If you want, you can see this strategy of giving as a reward to hard-workers, but, in reality, this is the most effective strategy to give help to individuals you meet without requiring any sacrifice from them.

However – and this a big however – giving to individuals is probably not the best way you can help the poor in a developing country. Poverty in the developing world is the result of structural problems – lack of human and physical capital, poor governance, poor institutions, etc – that your marginal contribution can’t hope to overcome. I understand the desire for a human connection in giving, but I think that’s best left for volunteer work in your own local community.  If you wish to help the poor the BEST you can in a developing country you’re traveling through, wait until you’re home, then write a check to the best charity you can find. Check-writing is not as heart-warming as handing money or gifts to individuals you’ve met, true – but charity work should not be about you, the giver.

These children live in the slum at Manek Chowk.

Photo Credit: Meanest Indian

Give Well – measured & proven results

It’s likely that, if you donate to non-profit organizations, you’re doing it wrong. Or, at least, not as right as you could be (remember opportunity costs!). If there’s one thing my graduate course in development economics taught me, it’s that it is damn hard to effectively help the poor. Many of the programs we believe will do good – such as the Grameen Foundation’s Village Phone program or agriculture assistance – don’t actually achieve much when economists go back and try to track the results of intervention. Good-sounding development projects just don’t necessarily result in good outcomes.

It is critically important that charities’ programs and projects are evaluated carefully so that we can send money to programs that we know are providing effective help to those in need. Luckily for those of us who don’t have time to search out the charities that are tracking outcomes and proving their programs effective, there’s an organization out there that is already doing this work: GiveWell

GiveWell examines charities – you can submit your favorite charity if they haven’t evaluated it yet – and asks them the tough questions about how they’re measuring their projects’ impacts. Very few charities pass their inspection – but for the ones that do, you can be certain that your donation dollars will have a true impact on the poor. After examining their site in-depth, I remain extraordinarily impressed by their thoroughness and their commitment to looking for the most effective charities in the world

Perhaps the greatest acclaim I can give them is that all of my future donations will be going to GiveWell’s top-rated charities, such as the Stop TB Partnership and Pratham, a large, India-based organization that runs a wide variety of programs aiming to improve education for children in India. If you’re looking to help the poor as best you can in the future – effective giving that focuses on those in need, not you, as the giver – then, please, donate to one of GiveWell’s top charities as well.

South Asian women in intercultural relationships

More than one reader has written in asking whether I knew of anyone in an intercultural relationship where the paring was Indian woman and [blank] guy, since some of the difficulties these couples face can be different from those seen by a South Asian dude and [blank] gal. I personally don’t know any of these couples in real life – not seriously committed, anyways – but I do know that there are a few readers here who of these pairings (obviously – since more than one person wrote in!). So, if you’re interested in starting a discussion on the particular problems faced by these couples, speak up – this thread’s for you! Alternatively, if you’re a bit too shy to discuss the topic here, you can email me (gorigirl.admin.com) or use the contact form on the Got a Question? page, and I’ll pass along your contact information to those who were enquiring.

The following websites and article might also be of interest to couples where one person is an Indian woman. I’m only showing the pick of the litter – you can find more on the Intercultural Resources page:

• MasalaCouples – a livejournal community featuring South Asian mixed marriages and relationships where I know there are a few couples of this paring.
• Bucking tradition and following the path of my heart – an article written by a young Indian woman about dating outside of her race.
• Marriage of True Minds – an article from beliefnet discussing the intercultural relationships and weddings of three South Asian women
• The United Colors of Desi -  an article discussing intercultural marriage with a few couples of the above type profiled.

Nepalis in intercultural relationships

Another reader is looking for couples where one person is Nepalese. She writes:

I was wondering if you have any readers or friends who are in an intercultural relationship that is American-Nepali. A lot of reading material out there talks about South Asian relationships that are American-Indian, which I enjoy and extrapolate all that I can from, but it would be nice to have others to talk to that are in the same situation. There are SO many Nepalis in the US these days, I am sure there are a lot out there!

So, same deal here – I don’t know of any Nepali-other couples (all my Nepalese friends are currently loving the single life), but perhaps one of the readers here does?

There also aren’t a lot of resources – that I could find – out there for interracial/intercultural couples where one partner is Nepali. This site, aimed at explaining Nepali culture to Canadians, has a few interesting bits, including some recommend fiction, but nothing focused on intercultural relationships. On that topic, I could only find this article, called Cultural Crisscross, which is nice, but not very long. If anyone else knows of articles that might be of use, be sure to comment below.