Wrong again! How impressions can lead us (somewhat) astray

Three weeks ago I sat down to clean and analyze 16 years of economic data (1995-2010) from the village of Mirumba (Mpimbwe Division), lying at the northern end of the Rukwa valley (then Rukwa now Katavi Region). Together with graduate students and postdocs, I have been focused to date primarily on data regarding demographic, food insecurity, child health, inter-household cooperation and natural resource management issues, and on a more general history of the Pimbwe people (English and Kiswahili). The place is fascinating, both for its remoteness (and attendant poverty), its proximity to major conservation areas (Katavi National Park and the Rukwa Game Reserve) and the dynamics that have arisen between resident horticulturalists (the Pimbwe) and immigrant Sukuma pastoralists who have brought large herds, more advanced farming techniques, and new economic opportunities over the last few decades.

The economic data had always seemed a bit boring, just something to stick in as a right-side variable. But when Dan Brockington came up with the Longterm Livelihood Change in Tanzania project, I realized I could perhaps leverage my economic measures to tackle some of the issues this project has been addressing. Furthermore, I could confirm my deeply-held conviction that inequality in Mirumba, inhabited almost exclusively by Pimbwe families, had increased radically between 1995 and 2010 contingent on economic liberalization of the Tanzanian state in that period.

So what did I learn over the last couple of weeks?

First, how wrong I have been in assuming that inequality in Mpimbwe, or at least the village of Mirumba, is growing. Yes, there has been a marked increase in variability in the production of cash crops, the number of months households are without maize, and the total (deflated) cash value of household asset investments. And yes, the Gini coefficient in material wealth is high.

But, taking a longitudinal stance and using indigenous wealth categorizations, the lower middle wealth ranks (that are locally thought of as “vulnerable” or struggling”) have swollen, drawing in households from below (“destitute” and “very poor”) not from above (“satisfactory”, “productive”, “very productive” and “rich”, and there are less households classed as destitute (Figure 1). In this respect, the story of Mirumba parallels other Tanzanian villages described in this blog, and likely reflects Kilimo Kwanza policies, better crop marketing opportunities, the building of a new road into the northern Rukwa Valley (Figure 2), and other features of national economic development. The details are in a draft paper prepared for our workshop (June 2018), and of course raise many questions about who is getting wealthier and why, issues critical to determining how national economic growth impacts developments at the local level, and whether economic growth in contemporary Africa is indeed inclusive of the poor. Answering such questions will require further analysis that pays closer attention to sample attrition, individual variability and the domestic cycle.

Figure 1. The distribution of indigenous wealth categories across years

The inconsistencies between my perceptions of greater inequality and the actual evidence from my data are nevertheless quite puzzling. Unlike the other contributors to this blog, I have been visiting Mirumba almost annually over the last 20 years, and conducted systematic censuses on 7 occasions. So I do not have the luxury of being totally amazed at the new vibrant economic activity at a revisit after 20 years absence to a once sleepy village, nor by the shock of seeing ranked boda bodas along fondly (or not so fondly) remembered rutted tracks that have now sunk beneath a metalled road. Slow change is hard to perceive . . .

Figure 2. 'The Prime Minister’s road' cutting through Mirumba in 2010

So why did I get it so wrong? There are several hypotheses.

First I’m just a bad anthropologist. Always a possibility, and not one I wish to explore, specially not using longitudinal models! [Editor's note: before readers rush to accept this possibility they may wish to consider some of the other papers which have come out from the years of work that Monique and others invested in Mpimbwe. Try here on cooperation, demography, food insecurity, marriage and Sungusungu. They should also realize that Monique’s data – 7 surveys of the entire population of the village over a 15 year period – is unparalleled. DB]

Second, and related, I am biased by the general concern among academics and others by growing inequality in this second “Gilded Era”, brought to our attention by much publicized authors like Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, Thomas Piketty, the late Sir Tony Atkinson and many others. In fact, I have become quite obsessed with the patterning of inequality across societies. To me, like many others, Alwyn Young’s African Miracle flew in the face of what I was seeing in Mirumba. The old – sick and often abandoned by their struggling kin; the rich – withdrawing from cooperative networks; the prevalent intra-household conflict leading to divorce and abandonment of children; the incessant witchcraft accusations driven by jealousy and deprivation; and the many struggling families selling their maize after the harvest for much needed cash, only to live with an empty barn for the rest of the year and pushed into poorly remunerated day labour. But maybe Mirumba had been like this in 1995, and it was simply this much feted “African Miracle” that was sharpening my vision, rendering salient the exceptions.

Third, is it possible that our perceptions of inequality do not reflect Gini coefficients, Theil’s indices or coefficients of variation, but rather are informed by rarity. If there are fewer destitute households, are they somehow more noticeable, and more influential in guiding our intuitions about inequality? I simply don’t know, though surely psychologists have studied this.

Fourth, my empirical analyses are wrong. This is something I am still working on, and leads to my conclusion. We need data, strong methodologies, and rigourous analysis to tackle the question of who gets wealthy and why and, just as important, who gets left out. The Longterm Livelihood Change in Tanzania Project is doing just this, and additionally examining whether a household’s economic status is indeed a good indicator of wellbeing, a question with which thoughtful anthropologists seriously grapple.

Finally, two caveats regarding the situation in Mirumba. First despite the somewhat positive story in Figure 1, I should reiterate that there is increasing inequality in crop production, material assets and food insecurity. It’s not like everyone in Mirumba is doing well – far from it: “vulnerable” or “struggling” is not a great category to be in, though better than “destitute”. Second, I have not conducted a full census since 2010. In 2012 my field season was cut short by a really bad case of malaria (or rather a reaction to the treatment). Brief visits back since then, largely in connection with conservation and development work, do suggest growth, especially since Mpimbwe has now become a District of the new Katavi Region. In this connection too, note that Mtowisa, further south down the Rukwa Valley, only began to show its sesame boom after 2010.

Time to go back and get more data ….. any volunteers?