I asked a question on Quora that garnered a number of interesting replies to this question: http://www.quora.com/Poverty/Which-is-harder-being-poor-in-America-

I asked a question on Quora that garnered a number of interesting replies to this question: http://www.quora.com/Poverty/Which-is-harder-being-poor-in-America-or-being-middle-class-in-the-developing-world?share=1 http://www.quora.com/Poverty/Which-is-harder-being-poor-in-A... The basic gist is that just looking at quantity of physical possessions is an impoverished way of analyzing the situation.