Any discussion about poverty is worth including decision fatigue [1].
I've never been so poor as to lose water/electricity or to ever worry about if I was going to eat that night but there was a time as a child where we weren't _that_ far off (in retrospect).
So I don't presume to be able to speak from experience about true poverty but the after-effects of living even a relative (by Western standards) meager existence are interesting.
Others have mentioned about those who are poor tend to spend all their money in case it goes away. The NYT piece mentions this as well. It's also why there are big purchases of TVs and the like around the time poor families in the US receive their EITC refunds.
In my case I've had periods where I've been out of work and thankfully I could quickly adjust my expenses to my circumstances. The ability to live frugally is a useful one.
On the flipside, I am a software engineer. I make a good living. I sit in a Manhattan apartment that I own and still part of me is planning for what to do if it all goes away. I guess having contingencies isn't a bad thing but I wonder if that's really what it is. Or is it just a subconscious expectation of a meager existence? Is that a result of a fairly humble childhood or something else? Maybe that's the software engineer part of me working out worst case outcomes. Or maybe it's the expectation of worst case outcomes that is applied quite usefully to software engineering?
I really can't say.
I do however see people who barrel along with the unstated expectation that the good times will continue forever. I can't say why they are this way. It does seem like it's a better way to live though because even though things may take a turn for the worse what is the sense in worrying about it?
Fifty years the US had the "war on poverty" and despite the billions spent the poverty rate remains about the same. This does seem to suggest there are behavioural issues that either make someone more prone to being poor and making it harder to escape.
In many cases I'm sure the problem is simply not knowing any better. I do wonder if genetic traits/dispositions play a part, particularly in the areas of impulse control, which itself tends to lead to increased violence, unwanted pregnancy and other outcomes that are likely to result in the continuing poverty
Circumstances matter a lot. For example, I find the Freakonomics argument that legalized abortion led to reduce crime [2] to be compelling.
Still I imagine if you took someone born in poverty and put them an an environment where they had every advantage of the affluent, their outcomes would be a lot better.
I've never been so poor as to lose water/electricity or to ever worry about if I was going to eat that night but there was a time as a child where we weren't _that_ far off (in retrospect).
So I don't presume to be able to speak from experience about true poverty but the after-effects of living even a relative (by Western standards) meager existence are interesting.
Others have mentioned about those who are poor tend to spend all their money in case it goes away. The NYT piece mentions this as well. It's also why there are big purchases of TVs and the like around the time poor families in the US receive their EITC refunds.
In my case I've had periods where I've been out of work and thankfully I could quickly adjust my expenses to my circumstances. The ability to live frugally is a useful one.
On the flipside, I am a software engineer. I make a good living. I sit in a Manhattan apartment that I own and still part of me is planning for what to do if it all goes away. I guess having contingencies isn't a bad thing but I wonder if that's really what it is. Or is it just a subconscious expectation of a meager existence? Is that a result of a fairly humble childhood or something else? Maybe that's the software engineer part of me working out worst case outcomes. Or maybe it's the expectation of worst case outcomes that is applied quite usefully to software engineering?
I really can't say.
I do however see people who barrel along with the unstated expectation that the good times will continue forever. I can't say why they are this way. It does seem like it's a better way to live though because even though things may take a turn for the worse what is the sense in worrying about it?
Fifty years the US had the "war on poverty" and despite the billions spent the poverty rate remains about the same. This does seem to suggest there are behavioural issues that either make someone more prone to being poor and making it harder to escape.
In many cases I'm sure the problem is simply not knowing any better. I do wonder if genetic traits/dispositions play a part, particularly in the areas of impulse control, which itself tends to lead to increased violence, unwanted pregnancy and other outcomes that are likely to result in the continuing poverty
Circumstances matter a lot. For example, I find the Freakonomics argument that legalized abortion led to reduce crime [2] to be compelling.
Still I imagine if you took someone born in poverty and put them an an environment where they had every advantage of the affluent, their outcomes would be a lot better.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-fro...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk6gOeggViw