Gaia Vince

“Even when the income disparity is very much greater, people are sticky. Micronesians mostly stay where they were born, even though they are free to live and work in the US without a visa, where the average income is twenty times higher. Niger, next to Nigeria, is not depopulated even though it is six times poorer and there are no border controls between the countries. People like to stay in the communities they were born in, where everything is familiar and easy, and many require a substantial push to migrate – even to another location in the same nation, and even when it would be obviously beneficial. One study in Bangladesh found that a programme that offered subsidies to help rural people migrate to the city for work during the lean season didn’t work, even when workers could make substantially more money through seasonal migration.22 One problem is the lack of affordable housing and other facilities in cities, meaning people end up living illegally in cramped, unregulated spaces or in tents.”
― Gaia Vince, Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World

“400 million Africans are born-again Christians and the various sects of Christianity are well represented in this small town, from the Church of Wonderful Miracles to the Church of the Best Future, and there is also a large Muslim community. People give around 10% of their meagre incomes to these groups – that’s far more than the government takes in taxation. And it’s made some of Africa’s church leaders multimillionaires with private jets, megachurches, video productions and publishing houses all preying on the desperate.”
― Gaia Vince, Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet we Made