Should We Give Money to Beggars? An Ethical Examination of Helping Our Fellow Human Beings

My argument in this piece is that we should not give money to beggars. Instead of spending our welfare budget on individuals we pass by on the street by chance, we should spend it on those who are truly poor and who would benefit more from a pound we give them, receiving greater help. It is argued that the one pound given to a beggar in a Western country is, on a global scale, spent on a person whose situation is relatively good. If we had spent that pound better, it could have saved the life of a starving, dying child somewhere else in the world.

I too have sometimes given money to beggars. On cold autumn days, when it seemed a homeless man needed money to buy a bowl of soup or a cup of coffee, I have occasionally given a few coins. I thought the value these coins had for him was far greater than the value they had for me, so giving them to that person was a good deed. But when I thought more about this matter, my opinion changed, and now I no longer give money to beggars. Let me explain why.

The arguments against giving money to beggars fall into two categories.

On one side, there are the traditional, relatively pessimistic arguments which, despite their pessimism, carry some weight. First, every coin we give to a beggar makes begging that much more profitable and, by comparison, makes working less beneficial. This is not good, because we want people to work, not to hold out their hands begging: working is useful, and begging is, at best, neutral and has an imposing, annoying form. Second, there is no guarantee that the beggar who receives the money will spend it in a way that improves their life situation. They might spend the money on drugs or alcohol, thereby funneling money into organized crime.

These objections are important to some extent, but in my view, they are not definitive or certain. What is certain is that if you give money to beggars, you have definitely spent your welfare budget on helping the wrong people.

First, when you give money to beggars, you are probably giving money to the beggars who receive the most help from others. Different beggars, depending on their location, appearance, and what they say, are successful to varying degrees in the amount of money they receive. Like anyone else, when you give money to a beggar, you are statistically more likely to give the most money to those whose location, appearance, and tricks encourage people to give the greatest amount of money.

An example: a while ago, I stopped and watched a beggar who looked very much like Mother Teresa. She had a small picture of Christ in front of her. When people passed by her, she would certainly bow her head, clasp her hands together and pray, and confidently refer to Jesus Christ in her prayer. Almost one in six people gave her money. If, on average, each person gave her 20 pence, and 10 to 15 people passed by her every minute, she would rake in 20 to 30 pounds an hour. This is a good income, and if you were to give money to beggars impulsively, you are more likely to end up giving money to people like Mother Teresa and their ilk than to help women and men whose appearance is weaker at eliciting sympathy and creating guilt in you, and whose location in the city is less popular.

Even if you follow a thoughtful strategy to eliminate this problem, you will still certainly, to a good approximation, be spending your money on the wrong people. The reason is that you probably live in a wealthy, developed country, and the beggars you pass by on the street are the same.

I remember when I was young, Ralph McTell's song "Streets of London" affected me deeply. The song tells the story of some of the poorest people in London, and especially one old man. It is a poignant story. But when I listened to the song again recently, it occurred to me that the old man in McTell's song—who is meant to represent poor people in developed countries—does not have a terrible life when viewed in a global perspective. According to the song's lyrics, the man has shoes, has access to a newspaper (albeit yesterday's), sits in a café and drinks tea. In a world where thousands die daily from malnutrition, this is a very comfortable life.

Since every pound spent on helping others can only be spent once, one must bear in mind the thousands who die from malnutrition. Every pound we give to a beggar is the very same pound withheld from a hungry child in the African desert. And why should we, in our giving, prefer a beggar in a Western country to a hungry child? It is not unlikely that the beggar we see on the street is among the wealthiest fifty percent of the world's population, and it is highly probable that they have benefited from educational and other opportunities that, for millions of Africans, merely dreaming of such opportunities is possible.

It may be a harsh claim to say that giving money to Western beggars is unethical. In any case, it is logical that every individual has the right to spend their money on themselves, and it seems they have the privilege to spend their money however they wish. Even setting aside the question of how much of our money we should spend on ourselves and how much on helping others, we should spend our money wisely. If our goal is our own benefit, giving money to beggars is not ideal. After all, giving money to beggars is wasting that money.

The ethical standard is that when helping others, we should not merely give money to people who are spatially close to us and whose appearance elicits our sympathy. Instead, we must think carefully about this matter and ensure we are helping those who are in the worst situation, who derive the most benefit from every pound we give, and who bear the least responsibility for the situation they are in. To achieve this goal, we must consciously decide how much of our money we want to spend on helping others, find the most efficient charity, donate money to that charity, and the next time a beggar asks us if we can spare a few cents, our answer should be no.

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Should We Give Money to Beggars? An Ethical Examination of Helping Our Fellow Human Beings

Ole Martin Moen (Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oslo, Norway)

Translated by: Zuhair Bagheri Noaparast

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