Living below the line: what would you hunger for?

Last week my husband and I attempted to live below the poverty line, currently defined by the World Bank as living on less than $1.25 (approximately £1) per day. For the estimated 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty, this means £1 a day for all food, shelter, health, education, transport and other living costs. We made things easier by restricting the challenge to food and drink only — and even then, we faltered at the start. We had scheduled five days beginning Monday, but received an invitation to dinner at a friend's on the Sunday evening — a chef who needed to use up fresh fish before leaving town. We postponed to Tuesday.

How did it go? It was harder than either of us expected. We planned as much variety as our budget allowed, but monotony set in quickly. We were hungry between meals, which meant we were irritable. I started with a sore throat. We used a surprisingly large amount of mental energy calculating whether we could afford a lump of sugar or a splash of cooking oil. We had to decline social engagements and default to sedentary activities to conserve energy.

By the end, I did not feel deserving of the bottle of red and the hunk of blue cheese we had set aside as a reward. I felt deeply fortunate, but uncomfortably so. The week had been an exercise in willpower, not an act of necessity. For those less fortunate, the frustrations of poverty are not elective; they are the result of an economic system that has pursued endless growth, benefiting a few while compensating the majority with welfare or development aid.

Orthodox economics has long neglected the relational and power inequalities that shape economic outcomes, both globally and locally. It has fuelled self-interest and economic instability. It has failed to prioritise fairness in its policies — genuine free trade in agricultural products being one example. It has underestimated the psychological and social strain of class-consciousness. And it has treated the things that genuinely contribute to well-being — the quality of our natural environments, the unpaid exchanges between households and communities — as free and expendable.

I challenge anyone to make do on less than £1 a day for a week and not come away craving an economy that embraces ethics once again, and better responds to the realities of people's lives.