There is a figure that gets thrown around a lot here—200—which is roughly the average number of Euros an average Kosovar is purported to make in an average month.  Americans: this is, today, equivalent to 253 dollars and 98 cents. 

But it is not only Americans who will express their wonder at this small number, because I hear the number most often from Europeans, and not only from them individually, but even more frequently from their newspapers and reports.  Kosovo is the poorest place in Europe (these reports and newspapers and individuals all say,) and this premise is used to support a whole host of government policies and international actions and non-profit industries: it is the motivation for millions of Kosovars and internationals working in Kosovo and even no small number of people who have yet to set food in this place. 

However, while income might define poverty, the standard definition of ‘income’ is widely agreed to be inadequate to a description of how people come by money in Kosovo.  There are of course the large sums come by through the diaspora: money sent home from abroad.  There are the large sums made on the black markets.  But even more important than either of these might be the large sums of money not spent in Kosovo.

The “average” Kosovar may not have to pay rent.  He and she probably live in a house with an extended family.  They may use little electricity and, if we can believe the reports on this, they may not pay their electricity bills anyway.  Clothing and health care, while of questionable quality, is dirt cheap.  Food is even cheaper, and most Kosovars prefer mother’s cooking, which makes their food even cheaper still.

But let’s go poorer.  Let’s not consider the “average” people—the ones who I assume are all around me on the streets of Mitrovica and Pristina, crowding me off the sidewalk on their way to school or the grocery store.  Let’s consider the tiny village, where even the poorest family has a roof over their heads, and bread and perhaps even a cow, but at least a garden. May not make more than a few Euros a week, selling the onions and cabbages from the garden, selling the cow milk, but cow milk and onions and a couple of Euros is all you need to keep the bellies full, bellies of six kids at least, and the kids will watch the cow and pick the onions, so dad doesn’t even have to work that hard.  Live like peasants, sure—like real peasants, from the dark ages fairy tales—simple clothes, like uniforms, bent backs, faces creased and bronzed by the sun.  But still: with their own houses, gardens and maybe cow, and with certain expectations from the State (ie. the State should clean up this mess where we throw the trash, and they should give us a little pension so that we can sit in the çajtore when we get old and not have to worry, and so on.)

These people are not the poor I know: they are not the American definition of poor, where ‘poor’ means homeless and hungry, dirty and desperate, simply unsustainable and clearly in death’s courtyard, if not at his door.  And in fact, I have almost never seen this picture of poverty in the Balkans, because the Balkans are different from much of the West.  The climate is uniform and reliable: good for growing gardens and feeding families.  The mountains are high and impenetrable: good for impeding progress but also good for preserving traditions—traditions that teach new generations the old and reliable ways of farming and feeding and living.²  

There are beggars in Kosovo: many of them.  But even this does not indicate poverty in the Western sense, because there is a greater tradition in the Balkans of charity for these particular people.  In America we are told that giving coins to beggars may encourage a cycle of dependence.  We are told that it is better to buy someone food, or to contribute to organized charities.  But in the Balkans begging is a legitimate source of income.  The beggars’ cardboard boxes are full of coins not from organized charities but from “average” Kosovars.³ Even the beggar’s wails and calls often take on a perfunctory tone, as if to say, “This is my part of our transaction: I wail and you give coins.” In other words, people in the Balkans, to a degree, accept this as something not unlike a job—begging does not have the same embarrassing implication here that it does in America.  Balkan begging is not necessarily shameful, and it earns a wage that accommodates a standard of living relatively better than the shameful poverty in many American ghettos and barrios.

So what is the “average” standard of living?  I will make assumptions based on the “average” people strolling the “average” Mitrovica corzo.  They all have cell phones.  They all wear clothes considered by their peers to be stylish: clothes that are not the very cheapest ones available.  They all eat regular and sustaining meals.  Many of them—perhaps most of them—have cars, and the streets of most major towns here are difficult to navigate for the traffic jams.  The young listen to the latest entertainments and go to school.  They can all afford regular coffees at the innumerable coffee shops.⁴  Now, it is true that the quality of the cars, phones, clothes and education may not meet “normal” Western standards.  But in practice they are all functional, and so I argue that Kosovo is not a ghetto.⁵ There is pollution and trash, but not the zones of squalor that Westerners associate with their own examples of abject poverty.  There are low wages, but enough income to accommodate a reasonable—if limited—existence.⁶ 

¹Of course, there is no end of disagreement about that American Poverty Line: what it means, who it includes, and how income is/ought to be utilized.  I offer this comparison as a point of reference only, knowing that, even as a comparison, it is limited—things cost oh so much more in my homeland.  An average Kosovar (who is that, exactly?  - more on that later) makes roughly $6500 less a year than the roughly $10,000 American poverty line for a family of one.  And who in Kosovo has a family of one?  Most Kosovo families are somewhat larger than their American counterparts, but if they were equivalent in size, Kosovars would then find themselves closer to $17,000 below the American poverty line.

²In turn these traditions teach the safety of families—families provide food and shelter and warmth—thereby encouraging even more stability, more self-reliance.

³Only yesterday I was approached in a Mitrovica cafe by a young Roma woman begging coins in the traditional manner.  This was not at all remarkable, and I would have completely forgotten it had I not seen her again an hour later: seated behind me in the van ferrying passengers between Mitrovica and Pristina.  This is not the cheapest way to travel, but she clearly could afford it.  Not only that, she could afford the passage of her brood of four young children, all of whom yelled and ran and hit each other with their shoes throughout the trip, often missing each other and striking me instead, or leaning over my shoulder and pretending to read my book with me.  These four hellions all had very engaging smiles, but I could not wait to get off of that van.

⁴In addition, virtually every Kosovar seems to be engaged in some kind of small family business.  The vast majority of shops, restaurants, gas stations, çajtores, tailors, qebaptores and car washes are owned and operated by what American statisticians would call “small-business owners.” Their inventories may be inexpensive (or illegal), their overhead low, their likelihood to pay taxes nil and their profits marginal.  But the very fact that there is an apparent boom of small businesses at least gives the illusion of a relatively normal (by Western standards) standard of living.

⁵Of course, there are exceptions.  There is a rising, albeit still small and new, middle class, there are the ridiculously wealthy, and there are the depressingly poor in the Balkans.  But none of these groups is anywhere near equivalent in size to their counterparts in Western populations.  I do not have facts for this particular statement, but have concluded, based on my personal experience, that the “average” person in Kosovo is substantially more common in his or her population than the “average” person in the U.S.

⁶I should say that there are a few ways that Kosovo is a ghetto, a sort of through-the-looking-glass version of American rap culture.  The fancy cars and fashion concerns of people who ought not to spend their limited resources on fancy cars and fashion.  The relative value of titles and respect to other less glorious but more tangible things.  But homelessness and hunger: these things are much harder to find, and I think this would surprise a lot of Americans.