Household Budgets
pp. 35-36 · Read in the full issue
Hanuabadans Can’t Balance Their Household Budgets Anthropologist Worried About Their Economic Position
From Our Own Correspondent
Port Moresby, June 28.
DR. CYRIL BELSHAW, who is doing re search work at Hanuabada village, near Port Moresby, painted a very gloomy picture of native economic stan dards in the village at a lecture before the Papua and New Guinea Scientific Society recently.
He worked it out that the per capita income of family groups surveyed was only £3/5/- a month, but he did not specify how many sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and other tag ends of relatives were horning in on the income of the actual workers.
A similar calculation for an Australian family would be probably even less if all the near and distant relatives came in and took a slice out of the wage earner’s pay packet.
Dr. Belshaw was also grieved at their diet—bread, some butter, and other store goods—but again did not mention how many native women were no longer bothering to cultivate gardens.
One analysis of a family income showed a very big cash payment in respect of “bride price.” He explained that pay ments of “bride price” represented cir culating wealth since goods and cash were distributed to all kinsfolk. Therefore, it seems that if they pay out “bride price” they also get it back on the next or sub sequent distributions, so the heavy lump
sum payment represented investment for future “bride price” receipts.
The analysis of family income distri bution given on information supplied by the natives themselves showed only frac tional amounts spent on “lolly water,” none at all on gambling, and no informa tion on wages lost through non-atten dance at work, or periods of not working.
If the natives* economic position is as bad as Dr. Belshaw paints it, it is diffi cult to reconcile this with the huge trade in non-essential goods at the trade stores.
Wristlet watches at £lO or more, sewing machines, pressure lamps, and scores of other high-price goods sell in volume at all the major trade stores.
Also there is the constant depletion of family or individual funds by hordes of visiting relatives who periodically “milk” the wage-earning town natives of their money and food supply. In hundreds of cases it is borne out that every time a working native saves a few pounds, his “father,” his “mother,” his “brother” or his “sister” arrives from the village,
stays for a merry spending of accumulated wages, and then goes home until the money has piled up for another visit.
Or, worse still, if he draws on future wages, and if his employer is foolish enough to allow it, the native is in debt for weeks ahead.
IT is pretty obvious that it is not the wage rate that is at fault, but rather the natives’ own social system, and until he can free himself of depredations
by his relatives, ho wage will be large enough to give him a good living standard.
The average native also has to learn to put necessities ahead of foolish spending on any old thing that catches his fancy.
And as for the wives getting out and working in gardens to supplement the family food supply and balance the food value deficiencies, they have their example in the fact that in practically all middle wage European families in Port Moresby
the wives are also working on salaried jobs.
The native children need not suffer by their mothers working in the gardens, for if they are too small to be taken along, there are plenty of elderly relatives to take on the job of baby-minding.
To give Dr. Belshaw credit, he ex plained that his analysis was based on only a preliminary survey, and he ad mitted that his figures were supplied by the natives themselves. A much more ex haustive and more closely investigated survey is needed before too much im portance is attached to the results of such a check.