That's arguable [0]. The null hypothesis might as well be defined as there being no causal relationship between people's actions and their economic status. We d

That's arguable [0]. The null hypothesis might as well be defined as there being no causal relationship between people's actions and their economic status. We do generally believe that people's decisions matter, but we also generally believe that context matters. People don't make decisions in vacuums, nor do all decisions matter. What the null hypothesis is or isn't does not change in your case, nor does multiple anecdotes equal data. While making irrational decisions with regard to one's economic situation and laying blame elsewhere is hypocritical, it is not behavior exclusive to poor people, and neither is "investing" in gambling. There is also the fact that poor people are not proven to consistently make these sorts of irrational choices. Any camp making any sort of claim is going to have to provide data. All the while, we have merrily ignored any other potential contributing factors, which will change depending on how we define poverty (absolute/relative, local/global, etc.) [0], including (off the top of my head): - History (e.g. colonialism, exploitation); - Government policy (discrimination, segregation, ethnic policies, etc.) [1, 2]; - Social attitudes/culture (stigma, prejudice, etc.) [3] - Nation status (underdeveloped nations ravaged by war, for instance); - Social mobility (auto-bootstrap-pulling, singular data points aside) [4]; - Risk factors in early development (lack of nutrition, stimuli and resources) [5, 6]; - Dumb luck (born into wealth, stumbling over winning lottery ticket). [0]: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/international-migration/glossary/poverty/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/theme... [1]: http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/01/11/discrimination-inequality-and-poverty-human-rights-perspective http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/01/11/discrimination-inequality... [2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/05/world/un-says-bad-government-is-often-the-cause-of-poverty.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/05/world/un-says-bad-governme... [3]: http://www.socialwatch.org/node/16324 http://www.socialwatch.org/node/16324 [4]: http://web.stanford.edu/group/scspi/issue_social_mobility.html http://web.stanford.edu/group/scspi/issue_social_mobility.ht... [5]: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-poverty-does-to-the-young-brain http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-poverty-does-to-... [6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9673796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9673796