Growing-Up Modern by Fuller Bruce;

Author:Fuller, Bruce; [Fuller, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Poverty and Class Differences

This case of early institution-building is remarkable, given the low level of economic and organizational development found even in contemporary Malawi. Let’s focus on this context within which the state attempts to signal mass opportunity and modem change. Malawi is among the top ten poorest countries in the world. Annual income per capita entering the 1990s equaled just $160. The economy is founded upon the production, distribution, and export of raw commodities: tobacco, tea, ground nuts, and some sugar cane. Most Malawians participate only marginally in the cash economy. The vast majority of adults and youths still engage in subsistence agriculture, producing only a small surplus that can be taken to market.

Cash income is very low in Malawi. The average rural household earns the equivalent of $80 per year in the market economy. The average annual wage in the private sector, which employs 80 percent of all wage earners, equalled less than $400 in 1986. Government earnings run about 20 percent higher on average. Teachers earn about $800 per year.12

Malawi is comprised of over twenty-five distinct language groups. Chichewa is the official language as set by the state. This language is spoken by no more than half the population. It is the language spoken by political leaders and bureaucrats. The basic infrastructure that normally integrates nation-states is rudimentary in Malawi. One tarmack road spans the length of the country. There are two, yes two, traffic lights in the entire country. With limited communication networks—only 17% of all households have a working radio—modem knowledge and values are limited to a few towns. The most recent household survey (1984) revealed that only 14 percent of all Malawian women reported being aware of any form of birth control, including abstinence, child spacing, and modem contraceptives.13

Fifty percent of the population (over age 5) has never attended primary school. “Literacy” is poorly defined and badly measured; the rate among adults stands at about 15 to 20 percent. There is almost nothing to read in rural villages and trading posts. Only 15 percent of Malawi’s 8 million people live in one of the nation’s four towns. Life expectancy at birth is just 46 years, due largely to the fact that one fifth of all babies die before reaching age 1. Malawi’s population, now growing at a rate of over 3.5 percent per year, will almost triple over the next 30 years.14

The state must rely on signaling mass opportunity, since the actual chance of a young Malawian entering wage employment is declining. Eighty-five percent of all Malawian adults remain engaged in agricultural production, a proportion which has not changed since the mid-1970s. Service employment, particularly within government, dominates the remaining share of the labor force. Government employment is growing at less than the rate of economic growth. Domestic production (GDP) has expanded at just 2.5 percent annually since 1980. Thus, a young Malawian’s probability of entering wage employment—already just one in seven—is declining at the rate of 1 percent per year.

Distinctions among social classes are sharp within Malawi.

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