PART II CASE-STUDY: GUINEA-BISSAU
8. Village-level case-study II: Braima Sori
8.6 Assets, wealth and poverty
Braima Sori is a very affluent village for Bissau-Guinean standards. This is apparent to anyone who visits the village through such signs as the style and quality of the dwellings, or the fact that a fair number of cars, motorcycles and satellite TV dishes are visible around Braima Sori. The household survey confirms this impression: around 1/2 of the households own TVs, 1/5 own cars, more than 1/4 own diesel generators171, and almost all the households have zinc rooftops and own cell phones (Table 8.7). The mean asset index score in the village is 0.87, compared to -0.43 in Caiomete (bearing in mind that the asset index is built in such a way as to have zero mean and unit standard deviation within the overall sample of 108 households).
171 That more households own TVs than diesel generators, although the former require the latter in order to function, should not be regarded as incongruent: first, because for a few years and until around 2009, Braima Sori was one of the few villages in Guinea-Bissau that were connected to the public electricity network: a power station in Bafatá provided this city, Gabú and the villages along the road linking the two cities with electricity, although this ceased to be the case when some of the cables were stolen and the supply was cut off; second, it is not uncommon for migrants to buy TVs, DVDs and other electrical appliances, have them sent back to the village and stored, and only buy the diesel generators upon returning to the village.
260 Frequency
(Yes)
%
Cell phone 34 94%
Radio 31 86%
TV 17 47%
Gas or electric stove 2 6%
Fridge 10 28%
Bicycle 24 67%
Diesel generator 10 28%
Zinc rooftop 35 97%
Motorcycle 11 31%
Car 8 22%
Table 8.7 Braima Sori: Ownership of durable household assets
Besides illustrating the extent to which the Braima Sori household are on average wealthier than those of Caiomete, the asset index also makes it possible to make a number of inferences with regard to the correlates of relative wealth and poverty within each village. The first thing to be noted is that the index scores have much greater variance within the Braima Sori sub-sample (standard deviation = 1.18) than among Caiomete households (s.d. = 0.50). The same is to say, there is much greater evidence of wealth differentiation in this village (Figure 8.12).
Figure 8.12 Braima Sori: Distribution of the asset index scores among the 36 households in the sample, boxplot
What accounts for this variance? The analysis of the association between the asset index and a few other variables helps to render this clear. To begin with, the household
261 outputs of cashew nuts and groundnuts (the two main cash crops) are positively correlated with the asset index score, although the correlation coefficients are not particularly high (0.358 and 0.432, respectively). At any rate, unlike what is the case in Caiomete, there is evidence of enhanced agricultural production being associated with long-run household wealth in Braima Sori. The asset index score is also positively and significantly associated with the hiring-in of agricultural labour (Table 8.8): the 18 households that hired agricultural labour in the previous 12 months exhibit a mean asset index score of 1.31, compared to 0.60 among the 15 that did not. Of course, this raises issues of causality, for it is not immediately clear whether this reflects the fact that greater household wealth accrues to these households as a consequence of surplus extraction, or, alternatively, the fact that wealthier households can afford to hire others to perform some of the harder farm chores for them. In reality, there is likely to be a measure of truth to both statements.
262 Yes No p-value of
significance of differences (T- test, 2-tailed)172 Households currently participating in migration 0.922 0.731 0.685
Remittance-recipient households 0.977 0.699 0.501
Households that include former migrants 1.175 0.624 0.183 Households that include former international
migrants
1.423 0.625 0.114
Households that include former migrants to Europe
1.518 0.739 0.218
Households that hired in agricultural labour in the previous year
1.312 0.595 0.071*
Households that hired out labour in the previous year
1.378 0.700 0.159
Female-headed households 0.888 0.858 0.944
Households that report earning part of their income from commerce
1.009 0.816 0.687
Table 8.8 Brima Sori: Mean asset index score for selected subsamples of households in Braima Sori
More surprising, however, is the fact that, contrary to what might be expected a priori, the hiring-out of labour, too, is associated with greater household wealth. In order to account for this, we need to recall that seven out of the nine households that hired out labour in Braima Sori also hired in and that, for that reason, these are not rural proletarian households, but rather rural households that combine simple commodity production in agriculture and paid work in other off-farm activities (masonry, carpentry, painting, etc.). It is the latter that appears as the hiring-out of wage labour in the survey – one which is mostly performed outside the village –, but it should not be confused with the selling of labour-power by destitute households that do not have anything else to live by. On the contrary, these households are actually wealthier than average – even in this relatively
172 Note that due to the lower absolute number of households in the sample, and consequently in each sub-sample, compared to Caiomete, it is less often the case that the differences have low p- values even when the means differences are greater.
263 wealthy village – as a consequence of their relatively greater than average livelihood diversification.
The analysis of Table 8.8 also shows that, unlike in Caiomete, the gender of the head of the household is not a determinant of relative poverty. This is accounted for by the fact that in Braima Sori, virtually the only female-headed households are the ones in which the male ‘former’ head of household is away as a migrant, having left his wife ‘in charge’.
Because most migrants from Braima Sori (especially international ones) enjoy a relatively privileged situation and show a high tendency to remit money back to their households of origin (see below), the consequence is that their female-headed households of origin do not appear to be more afflicted by poverty than male-headed ones. Basically, there is nothing in this context akin to the destitute and landless female-headed households of Caiomete.
Finally, Table 8.8 also suggests that both commerce and migration are also positively associated with greater household wealth. Those ten (out of 36) households that earned some of their income from commerce certainly seem wealthier than those that did not, although the difference is not as pronounced as in Caiomete. The effect of migration, however, is clearer: households that currently engage in migration are slightly wealthier than average, and this difference is even more pronounced among those that report having been sent remittances in the previous twelve months. Moreover, those households that have seen a migration cycle through to completion exhibit a very pronounced advantage over the rest – especially so in the case of former international migrants, and above all in the case of former migrants to Europe.
In sum, the relatively poor households of Braima Sori are typically those which have failed to participate in international migration, commerce and enhanced agricultural production. By contrast, Braima Sori’s wealthier households are those that engage in proto- capitalist agricultural production alongside merchant activities, and/or which have succeeded in ensuring a significant level of household wealth based on the income earned from international migration. This brings us to the topic of migration from this village and its effects.