7 ms·

The Psychology of Poverty: Where Do We Stand? [pdf]

43 points by elsewhen 3y ago

ganzuul 3y ago
There are other kinds of abundance than money but we are much too focused on that single value for wealth to truly account for our gifts. We destroy a lot of information that could make us happy by reducing it to currency. It's depressing when I create something I'm proud of and when I show it to others it in their perception it is part of an economy. That is in my opinion the true poverty trap.
- drekipus 3y ago
  Have you had any experience with poverty / getting others out of poverty? in which gives you experience to say "yes, this is the true poverty trap!" I know you're being poetic, but poverty is a very real thing. There comes a point where you need to worry about food on the table before worrying about self-actualization and "value-of-itself" for what creative thing you've done.
  - 8ytecoder 3y ago
    I know the general definition of poverty is around the utter basics - food and shelter - but it goes far beyond that. If you have to choose between buying a washing machine or sending your kids to a tutor. If you have to choose between buying everything as individual unit at the grocery store or cheaper-in-bulk goods from a big box store. If you have to choose between seeing the doctor now or wait and see if the issue goes away. If you have to choose between sending your kids to college or sending them off to work at 18. Decisions small and large, accumulate and create a much bigger impact than most people imagine. Each of those have an opportunity cost that could make their life a little better in the short run or a frustration in the short run that can help them towards a better life in the long run. Now imagine having to make these decisions consistently for two decades until you can see the return on it - like say your kids actually getting a better job or you becoming an entrepreneur or finding a career ...etc.
    - cartucho1 3y ago
      Related: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/on-the-experience-of-being-poor-ish https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/on-the-experience-of-be...
    - drekipus 3y ago
      > If you have to choose between buying a washing machine or sending your kids to a tutor. If you have to choose between buying everything as individual unit at the grocery store or cheaper-in-bulk goods from a big box store. If you have to choose between seeing the doctor now or wait and see if the issue goes away. If you have to choose between sending your kids to college or sending them off to work at 18. I kind of think these are just middle class issues rather than poverty; but you're right that this means different things to different people. > Decisions small and large, accumulate and create a much bigger impact than most people imagine. Now imagine having to make these decisions consistently for two decades until you can see the return on it - like say your kids actually getting a better job or you becoming an entrepreneur or finding a career ...etc. I think there's an element of "little bit at first, then all at once" -- i don't think it's that these individual items that "make wealth" but rather, they would be symptoms of different states of mind regarding stress, risk, etc. I climbed out of poverty and met my wife who's "comfortably middle-class" -- she has no appetite for risk (see dr straight away, get name-brand products, college first) and i have a much larger appetite for risk (wait and see, bulk-buy products, work first). Interesting to think about, thanks for the comment; i wonder if there is/should be a study / analysis on those questions.
      - j6zauas4gz 3y ago
        > I kind of think these are just middle class issues rather than poverty; but you're right that this means different things to different people. I don't think so. I grew up squarely middle class (and the question was never "can we afford health care or collage", but a weeklong trip to Disney world set our vacation budget back several years (to the point we could not take vacations, or only took small road trips). The idea of not being able to afford basic health care or a university education should be utterly alien to the middle class.
  - ganzuul 3y ago
    Yes.
- Geisterde 3y ago
  Prices are a heuristic people use for making choices more simply, because the number of ways an object can be defined is more numerous than the billions of atoms its made of. Further, for an item to be produced at scale and over time in the market, the profit must exceed the costs. Now, if you are able to see the value in something despite not having a firm monetization strategy, that just puts you in the same mental frame as the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. Jeff Bezos said something about how you should do what matters and find the profit later, it was written on the wall somewhere. SpaceX still might not be profitable (not sure), but the promise of 100kt of payload to LOE with recoverable lower and upper stages? Its worth the weight!
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > Further, for an item to be produced at scale and over time in the market, the profit must exceed the costs. I think you meant to say revenue? > Now, if you are able to see the value in something despite not having a firm monetization strategy, that just puts you in the same mental frame as the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. It is also the same mental frame every starving artist shares too. They are able to see the value in what they do despite not having a firm monetization strategy.
    - Geisterde 3y ago
      >I think you meant to say revenue? Yes, thanks. >It is also the same mental frame every starving artist shares too. They are able to see the value in what they do despite not having a firm monetization strategy. If you read the next sentence you can see I was gently incepting that along with the idea that successful people see value before they see the price they can attach to it. To even waste your time performing the economic calculation to determine the numbers you must first be motivated by something, there is a period of time however short between the idea and its technical analysis, the value you see and its monetization. Hey, that doesnt mean monetization isnt important, but it can be forestalled for important reasons like exploring the field or gaining experience, just as much as unimportant reasons, those, being subjective to the one paying the bills.
  - ganzuul 3y ago
drekipus 3y ago
Amazing document; these are the sorts of things i find in my own experience as i try to help my sister out of poverty. I'm very glad that these sort of papers come out and are reasoned about. The "psychology" is perhaps the ONLY aspect that keeps poverty going, and it's made worse by people removing agency, introducing pointless stress, and in general just poo-pooing any attempts to climb out of the pit.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > The "psychology" is perhaps the ONLY aspect that keeps poverty going Is there any basis for that? What about overwhelming bills and other liabilities, lack of marketable skills, illnesses (including addictions), lack of opportunities, lack of parenting and education, of food, etc. The data overwhelmingly says differently: The predictor of success is not psychology but pre-existing wealth and opportunity. Internationally, the difference is even more overwhelming. In my experience, it is a (condescencing, lazy) fantasy of the wealthy that poverty is just a matter of thinking differently, that anyone can do it because, after all, the wealthy person didn't have those obstacles. I say it's lazy because it doesn't take much examination of the data to see what wealth depends on.
  - hypertexthero 3y ago
    Thomas Picketty agrees: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/05/01/Piketty-Capital https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/05/01/Piketty-C... We need a basic income.
    - drekipus 3y ago
      Basic income would only be used to enslave other countries that don't implement it (much like sweatshops/consumerism we have now) If everyone implements it, then it's pointless, because currency only works when there's a potential difference (much like electricity). Basic income detracts from the conversation; we're talking about issues and you've got your favourite solution that is inevitably going to be shoe-horned into the conversation.
TriangleEdge 3y ago
"The authors posit that poverty consumes cognitive resources, including attention, executive control, and working memory, and thereby impairs decision-making" Poverty really hurts my soul to see. I talk about the homeless and drug addicted a lot. If there was something I could do that I would be certain would help in a large scale, I would 100% devote some time to it. In Canada, I'm glad to see that people living in poverty dropped from 15% of the population to 8% [1]. In 2011, having considered living in my car but being taken in by some friends instead, I'd like to add I have long lasting resentment that takes some chunk of my thinking always. [1] https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/topics-start/poverty https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/topics-start/poverty
- djbusby 3y ago
  Poverty consumes the mind even after(if) you can break out. No hard data, just myself and a few others I know that had a rough start. I'd like to think everyone in that position gives back but, my anec-data shows it's (sadly) not true.
millzlane 3y ago
Millions of children experience food insecurity in the US every year. If what we know about food and brain development, alarm bells should be ringing. Instead I have a not so fond memory of people fighting to end the practice of providing breakfast and lunches at schools. I recently started college at 38 as an adult who grew up in a poverty stricken area. Food insecurity was a problem in my childhood. Thing like sitting food like milk in between the screen door to avoid running the fridge during the winter. Or hitting up food Pantry's at the local churches. Interestingly my "case study" I had to write for academic writing was on the link between finance and health. After all my reading and research about nutrition, toxic stress, and environmental conditions I'm surprised that I made it. All that to say, food insecurity doesn't come up often in the conversation. How does a poor kid with shitty parents who don't feed him develop a working brain? And is it their fault if their mental shortcomings effect their mental stability and behavior as a adolescent?
- black_13 3y ago
  [dead]

43 points by elsewhen 3y ago

There are other kinds of abundance than money but we are much too focused on that single value for wealth to truly account for our gifts. We destroy a lot of information that could make us happy by reducing it to currency. It's depressing when I create something I'm proud of and when I show it to others it in their perception it is part of an economy. That is in my opinion the true poverty trap.

drekipus 3y ago
Have you had any experience with poverty / getting others out of poverty? in which gives you experience to say "yes, this is the true poverty trap!" I know you're being poetic, but poverty is a very real thing. There comes a point where you need to worry about food on the table before worrying about self-actualization and "value-of-itself" for what creative thing you've done.
- 8ytecoder 3y ago
  I know the general definition of poverty is around the utter basics - food and shelter - but it goes far beyond that. If you have to choose between buying a washing machine or sending your kids to a tutor. If you have to choose between buying everything as individual unit at the grocery store or cheaper-in-bulk goods from a big box store. If you have to choose between seeing the doctor now or wait and see if the issue goes away. If you have to choose between sending your kids to college or sending them off to work at 18. Decisions small and large, accumulate and create a much bigger impact than most people imagine. Each of those have an opportunity cost that could make their life a little better in the short run or a frustration in the short run that can help them towards a better life in the long run. Now imagine having to make these decisions consistently for two decades until you can see the return on it - like say your kids actually getting a better job or you becoming an entrepreneur or finding a career ...etc.
  - cartucho1 3y ago
    Related: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/on-the-experience-of-being-poor-ish https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/on-the-experience-of-be...
  - drekipus 3y ago
    > If you have to choose between buying a washing machine or sending your kids to a tutor. If you have to choose between buying everything as individual unit at the grocery store or cheaper-in-bulk goods from a big box store. If you have to choose between seeing the doctor now or wait and see if the issue goes away. If you have to choose between sending your kids to college or sending them off to work at 18. I kind of think these are just middle class issues rather than poverty; but you're right that this means different things to different people. > Decisions small and large, accumulate and create a much bigger impact than most people imagine. Now imagine having to make these decisions consistently for two decades until you can see the return on it - like say your kids actually getting a better job or you becoming an entrepreneur or finding a career ...etc. I think there's an element of "little bit at first, then all at once" -- i don't think it's that these individual items that "make wealth" but rather, they would be symptoms of different states of mind regarding stress, risk, etc. I climbed out of poverty and met my wife who's "comfortably middle-class" -- she has no appetite for risk (see dr straight away, get name-brand products, college first) and i have a much larger appetite for risk (wait and see, bulk-buy products, work first). Interesting to think about, thanks for the comment; i wonder if there is/should be a study / analysis on those questions.
    - j6zauas4gz 3y ago
      > I kind of think these are just middle class issues rather than poverty; but you're right that this means different things to different people. I don't think so. I grew up squarely middle class (and the question was never "can we afford health care or collage", but a weeklong trip to Disney world set our vacation budget back several years (to the point we could not take vacations, or only took small road trips). The idea of not being able to afford basic health care or a university education should be utterly alien to the middle class.
- ganzuul 3y ago
  Yes.
Geisterde 3y ago
Prices are a heuristic people use for making choices more simply, because the number of ways an object can be defined is more numerous than the billions of atoms its made of. Further, for an item to be produced at scale and over time in the market, the profit must exceed the costs. Now, if you are able to see the value in something despite not having a firm monetization strategy, that just puts you in the same mental frame as the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. Jeff Bezos said something about how you should do what matters and find the profit later, it was written on the wall somewhere. SpaceX still might not be profitable (not sure), but the promise of 100kt of payload to LOE with recoverable lower and upper stages? Its worth the weight!
- krisoft 3y ago
  > Further, for an item to be produced at scale and over time in the market, the profit must exceed the costs. I think you meant to say revenue? > Now, if you are able to see the value in something despite not having a firm monetization strategy, that just puts you in the same mental frame as the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. It is also the same mental frame every starving artist shares too. They are able to see the value in what they do despite not having a firm monetization strategy.
  - Geisterde 3y ago
    >I think you meant to say revenue? Yes, thanks. >It is also the same mental frame every starving artist shares too. They are able to see the value in what they do despite not having a firm monetization strategy. If you read the next sentence you can see I was gently incepting that along with the idea that successful people see value before they see the price they can attach to it. To even waste your time performing the economic calculation to determine the numbers you must first be motivated by something, there is a period of time however short between the idea and its technical analysis, the value you see and its monetization. Hey, that doesnt mean monetization isnt important, but it can be forestalled for important reasons like exploring the field or gaining experience, just as much as unimportant reasons, those, being subjective to the one paying the bills.
- ganzuul 3y ago

drekipus 3y ago

Amazing document; these are the sorts of things i find in my own experience as i try to help my sister out of poverty. I'm very glad that these sort of papers come out and are reasoned about. The "psychology" is perhaps the ONLY aspect that keeps poverty going, and it's made worse by people removing agency, introducing pointless stress, and in general just poo-pooing any attempts to climb out of the pit.

wolverine876 3y ago
> The "psychology" is perhaps the ONLY aspect that keeps poverty going Is there any basis for that? What about overwhelming bills and other liabilities, lack of marketable skills, illnesses (including addictions), lack of opportunities, lack of parenting and education, of food, etc. The data overwhelmingly says differently: The predictor of success is not psychology but pre-existing wealth and opportunity. Internationally, the difference is even more overwhelming. In my experience, it is a (condescencing, lazy) fantasy of the wealthy that poverty is just a matter of thinking differently, that anyone can do it because, after all, the wealthy person didn't have those obstacles. I say it's lazy because it doesn't take much examination of the data to see what wealth depends on.
- hypertexthero 3y ago
  Thomas Picketty agrees: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/05/01/Piketty-Capital https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/05/01/Piketty-C... We need a basic income.
  - drekipus 3y ago
    Basic income would only be used to enslave other countries that don't implement it (much like sweatshops/consumerism we have now) If everyone implements it, then it's pointless, because currency only works when there's a potential difference (much like electricity). Basic income detracts from the conversation; we're talking about issues and you've got your favourite solution that is inevitably going to be shoe-horned into the conversation.

TriangleEdge 3y ago

"The authors posit that poverty consumes cognitive resources, including attention, executive control, and working memory, and thereby impairs decision-making" Poverty really hurts my soul to see. I talk about the homeless and drug addicted a lot. If there was something I could do that I would be certain would help in a large scale, I would 100% devote some time to it. In Canada, I'm glad to see that people living in poverty dropped from 15% of the population to 8% [1]. In 2011, having considered living in my car but being taken in by some friends instead, I'd like to add I have long lasting resentment that takes some chunk of my thinking always. [1] https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/topics-start/poverty https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/topics-start/poverty

djbusby 3y ago
Poverty consumes the mind even after(if) you can break out. No hard data, just myself and a few others I know that had a rough start. I'd like to think everyone in that position gives back but, my anec-data shows it's (sadly) not true.

millzlane 3y ago

Millions of children experience food insecurity in the US every year. If what we know about food and brain development, alarm bells should be ringing. Instead I have a not so fond memory of people fighting to end the practice of providing breakfast and lunches at schools. I recently started college at 38 as an adult who grew up in a poverty stricken area. Food insecurity was a problem in my childhood. Thing like sitting food like milk in between the screen door to avoid running the fridge during the winter. Or hitting up food Pantry's at the local churches. Interestingly my "case study" I had to write for academic writing was on the link between finance and health. After all my reading and research about nutrition, toxic stress, and environmental conditions I'm surprised that I made it. All that to say, food insecurity doesn't come up often in the conversation. How does a poor kid with shitty parents who don't feed him develop a working brain? And is it their fault if their mental shortcomings effect their mental stability and behavior as a adolescent?

black_13 3y ago
[dead]