A lot can be said about poverty; it is painful, shameful, stigmatized, and it can lead to health issues and injustice. You don’t have to look far to see people suffering from poverty. Even in an economic powerhouse such as the United States, poverty is everywhere. There are people living under bridges, people on government assistance, some living paycheck to paycheck, and others drowning in debt. Governments, private institutions and people themselves have made great progress minimizing absolute poverty; however, in many areas, poverty is still prevalent.
I came from a world where poverty was pervasive. Majority of the people I knew growing up were poor. We lived on under a $1/day. I have witnessed people doing hard labor for eight hours to make an equivalent of a dollar. To put that into perspective, in 1884, Nikola Tesla was digging trenches and earning $2 per day before his inventions started earning him money. Tesla wasn’t an outlier; men constructing the US Transcontinental Railroad in 1850s we earning about $3/day. Over 100 years ago, Tesla and the railroad workers were earning better wages than the poorest people today. If you account for inflation, Tesla was doing much better in 1884 than half of the world’s population today.
To go back to my story, not a lot of time has passed since I left my poor country behind. I left when I was 16, and I still have a lot of good and bad memories regarding my previous life. A lot has changed since I left, but progress has been limited to certain areas. For instance, technology has leap-frogged Africa from dark-ages to Digital/Information Age. Back in 1999, no one in my hometown owned a house phone, cell phones were nonexistent. I used to ride a bike or walk for two hours to use a phone to talk to my parents who were 8000 miles away in California. The phone call had to be scheduled and a family friend who owned a business allowed us to use her phone.
Today, many people in Africa have cell phones and mobile Internet. My classmates from 2nd grade now have access to communication tools such as Facebook. I have been able to reconnect with childhood friends due to availability of cell phones and Internet. But even with all that progress, I can’t help but see poverty. Technology has finally brought poverty into the Digital Age. I can see the pain on the social media post from my old friends and schoolmates. Even when they are smiling on the Facebook selfie, I can see some elements of poverty in the background. The smiles are full of hope but empty of prosperity. The more the world has changed, the more things has stayed the same. All the human advance have made life better for some of us but have left majority of the world’s population behind.
Even today, people in third world countries still work for 8 hours to earn a dollar or two. I was lucky to escape before I broke my back digging trenches, but I did experience the harshness of poverty. The worst example for me was not owning a pair of shoes for a whole year. Yes, I walked everywhere bare footed. We used to make mattress out of old clothes or chicken feathers. At night we used candles or homemade kerosine lamps to do homework. Fortunately, my family alway had food as we were farmers, and we had a shelter to call home. The shelter leaked when it rained, but rain was scarce. As kids, this was normal life. It was the only life we knew.
We were also lucky since we lived in an area that never experience famine. We had drought and crops would wither and die. But eventually, the rain would rescue us. So, I had no reason to complain; I could have won the ‘womb lottery’ and be born in Somalia, where famine and war have left people in hell. The fact that I’m typing this on an iMac, somewhere in California, illustrates how lucky I have been in life. I have overcome poverty through luck and handwork, but I have not forgotten. I can still feel poverty’s gravitational force trying to pull me back down.
Many people have escaped poverty, but their minds cannot escape the past. Poverty is mostly physical, the lack of material possessions, but there is no denying the negative impact poverty has on our psyche. So, let us take a closer look at poverty and how it impacts us emotionally and cognitively.
Poverty erodes confidence: Studies have shown children raised in poverty tend to do worse in school. They have poor study habits and social skills. Many fall behind and they never catch up. The feeling of failure start to be ingrained in their young minds. They start to lose confidence in their abilities. This is a start of a downward spiral, which can last a lifetime. Some will drop out of school, get minimum wage jobs, live paycheck to paycheck, and settle into self-doubt and self-destructing lifestyle.
Poverty contributes to cognitive hindrance: There was a time when humans were hunters and gatherers. When food was scarce, a whole day would be spent searching for food; however, when food was in abundance, they had extra time to make better weapons, build better shelters or entertain themselves dancing or painting. Humans are the same today. When resources are scarce, we tend to focus our energy and time trying to attain those resources. The intense focus on the more pressing need allows us to prioritize certain goals. Humans have been able to achieve big feats because of scarcity mindset.
On the other hand, scarcity imposes cognitive load in our working memory. Cognitive load is the effort or weight of information that the working memory has to process. When faced with the inability to pay rent and a possible eviction, the brain tend to focus on that. The brain becomes enslaved or hijacked by the current problem, which feels like an emergency. A significant amount of cognitive resources is spent on a current emergency, which becomes an expensive trade off. Instead of planning for the future or solving more important issue, the brain power is wasted on short term goals and the never-ending emergencies. This leads to people feeling stuck and not being able to make progress in life. As a result, the poor are unable to think or plan their way out of misery. Scarcity has robbed them the freedom of the mind.
Poverty leads to self-destructing behaviors: daily struggle to make ends meet can filter through all the decisions someone has to make. This can lead to rushed and emotionally driven decisions that may exacerbate poverty. When money is very limited, it requires a lot of discipline and impulse control. The effort needed to resist the urge to spend, can be stressful and can drain willpower. Loss of self or impulse control can lead to remorse, self-loathing, anxiety, depression, and hopelessness. Scarcity strains our self-control capabilities.
On Psychology Today, Dr. Heshmat explained how poverty taxes cognitive resources and causes self-control failure. The inability to pay rent or buy groceries lead people to borrowing money from places that take advantage of them. Although people might understand the consequences of PayDay loans, they are unable to control the urge to spend money they may need for a future emergency. Saving, to them, is much harder than borrowing from these predatory loan companies.
Revolving or increasing debt consumes the already strained resources. With debt getting larger and money becoming more scarce, depression and anxiety starts to manifest. Some cope with depression by drinking or gambling. Feeling hopeless, the poor may choose to delay medical care until it is an emergency, healthy food becomes unattainable, they may live in dilapidated neighborhoods, they may get divorced, and the self destruction continues. At this point, scarcity has robbed the poor of the dreams and hope of a better tomorrow.
“The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.” Adam Smith
Conclusion: Poverty can be overcome by hard work, luck, or the combination of the two; however, our mental scar caused by poverty remains. Poverty has caused a lot of pain in the world, but the tragedy is not the unbearable living conditions, shame or stigma. The real tragedy is the loss of mental freedom. The freedom to think clearly and the freedom to pursue happiness.
Thank you for reading.
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