Help the world's poor: Buy some new clothes

This is a guest post written by Benjamin Powell, an assistant professor of Economics at Suffolk University and a Senior Economist with the Beacon Hill Institute.  He is the editor of Making Poor Nations Rich, and is currently writing a book entitled No Sweat: How Sweatshops Improve Lives and Economic Growth. Back to school shopping leads many people to buy apparel that was made in sweatshops. Rather than feel guilty for “exploiting” poor workers, shoppers should rejoice.  Their spending is some of the best aid we can give to people in poorer countries.

When workers voluntarily take a job they demonstrate that they believe the job is the best alternative available to them – even when that job is unsafe and the pay is very low compared to wages in the United States. That’s why economists with political views as divergent as Paul Krugman and Walter Williams have both written in defense of sweatshops.

Sweatshop jobs are often far better than the vast majority of jobs in the countries where they are located. David Skarbek and I researched sweatshops that were documented in U.S. news sources (or see here for my shorter, more general defense of sweatshops). We found that sweatshop worker earnings equaled or exceeded the average national income in 9 out of 11 countries we studied. Working in a sweatshop paid more than double the national average in four of the countries.

Sweatshops can also play a crucial role in economic development. Sweatshops bring investment, better technology, and the opportunity for workers to build skills. It was not long ago that sweatshops existed in many now-wealthy Asian countries.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that “We need to build a constituency of humanitarians who view low-wage manufacturing as a solution” for poverty in the third-world.   I hope many AidWatchers will join that constituency by defending sweatshops.