Samantha Pearson:
Exactly. So food price inflation always affects the poor more because the poor tend to spend a higher proportion of their income on food. And because they just don’t have that cushion, that margin, you know, when prices go up, they don’t have savings or they can’t, you know, they live literally day to day. I mean, millions of people in Latin America live like that. So it’s just been punishing.
I mean, we’ve done a lot of reporting in Brazil’s favelas, and it’s just heartbreaking. I mean, inflation sounds like such a kind of academic subject, you know, but you see the effects of inflation on the poorest people. And the one thing that struck me really was that it comes down to choices at the end of the day because you can’t afford to buy everything you need, so you have to make these heartbreaking choices about what to buy.
So I mean, we met a woman, for example, she could buy cooking oil, but then she couldn’t afford meat to cook or she buys meat, but then she can’t afford cooking oil, so she has to cook, I mean, in Brazil, people are starting to cook on open fires with wood and alcohol, and it’s just hugely dangerous. You know, if you’ve got kids, you know it can cause respiratory problems. And one woman, I mean, this particular scenario really got me in Brazil. We met a woman who didn’t have enough money to buy clothes for her kids. She’s got three kids. She didn’t have enough money to buy clothes for her kids in Sao Paulo, which is where I’m based. We’ve had a lot of cold weather recently. But she knew that the only way for her kids to eat was to send them to school, because in Brazil, the government gives kids at school food, and that’s probably the only decent meal they’re going to get in the day for local families. So she had this heartbreaking decision and she was like, Well, I don’t have enough money to give clothes to my kids, they’re freezing, you know, they don’t have enough clothes to keep them warm. But if I don’t send them to school, they’re not going to eat so it better they eat and get sick, or is it better they stay at home and don’t get sick, but don’t eat, you know, it’s like, I mean, it’s a humiliating position to be in as well for these families, you know, and they’re angry. And this obviously has political consequences. And it’s a huge problem in places like Brazil right now.
