People are poor because they are less intelligent than others, right? Poor people are less educated than rich people because they are less intelligent, right? People are poor because they lack confidence and drive, right? Poor people perform worse at most tasks because they are unwilling to put their energy into the task, right? WRONG, in all respects!
Stress obviously goes hand in hand with poverty, but the rich also worry about money. The difference is that the poor do not simply care about money. Continued poverty creates a stressful environment in which conflict, food insecurity, violence and housing concerns, among many others, arise from stress, but it also fuels it further. Thus, the whole environment of poverty perpetuates stress, leading to other problems, making it difficult to get out of poverty.
This study, from the UNICEF Office of Research, June 2016, reported that providing short-term relief in the form of cash payments did not reduce perceived stress, although it did improve financial security. Thus, it is clear that it is the environment of poverty that perpetuates stress and exacerbates related problems and that the solution is not as simple as quick cash, if the long-term perspective for the issue continues to be one of poverty.
But then, is the root of the problem that people are poor in the first place because they are less capable and intelligent than others? In fact, the opposite may be true.
According to Alice Walton, writing in the University of Chicago Business School magazine, The Chicago Booth Review, being poor can lower your IQ by as much as thirteen points.
A young man, a few decades ago, from a very impoverished background, was scheduled to write his Mensa qualification tests. In the weeks leading up to the test, in addition to having lived a life of deprivation, both his mother and father suffered what would be diseases that would end his life, he was forced to leave the house in which he had grown up, he was called to help a neighbor who was fighting a fire that threatened his house and the young man had spent the last of his finances for the month to pay for short-term housing. To say the least, he was stressed. It scored 138 on the Mensa test, high enough to qualify for membership.
Two years later, he wrote an IQ test again. He got a score of 165. That’s a big difference, rarely seen on intelligence tests. However, the only factor that had changed was that his income was now stable and reasonable and the other stressors in his life had dissipated.
Poverty lowers one’s IQ, not the other way around.
There is no doubt that not having a decent education is highly correlated with making less money in the workplace. But being poor also makes it extremely difficult to develop one’s academic potential.
There are countless stories about people who were forced to leave school prematurely to support their family. Others cite the lack of enough money for tuition as the reason they did not proceed to post-secondary studies. It’s not that these people don’t want an education. It is that they cannot find the financial means to achieve it and, in turn, remain mired in poverty.
However, even in primary school through high school, performance levels among those from a lower socioeconomic class are lower than those of classmates from wealthier backgrounds. It challenges the belief of many outside the low SEC that poverty implies moral failure. Performance suffers because the person is preoccupied with more immediate concerns. Try mental math when an angry dog chases you down the street! Your thoughts are hardly on anything other than that immediate moment.
Like any achievement, getting out of poverty requires confidence. in the belief that, firstly, it can do it and, secondly, that it is sustainable. Living in poverty tends to deprive people of the ability to plan for a better future. The day-to-day nature of existence at the bottom end of the SEC denies people the ability to take a long-term perspective. Oxford University and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report that when faced with poverty, people have a harder time making decisions, doubt their choices, and reduce attention spans. That is, the moment intrudes into the future.
Most governments in the Western world have introduced tax-free investment plans and retirement savings plan options to allow the poorest people to save for their future, but the plans are completely unrealistic. it is reasonable when today’s needs are far from being satisfied. Consequently, a very small fraction of those in the lowest socioeconomic group even consider retirement and contingent saving.
This pushes them even further behind their wealthier counterparts, which in turn affects their confidence, their ability to focus on development and growth, and forces them into the main channel of survival of the poorest of the poor. : everyday existence. .
It’s not that the poor don’t want better opportunities, or hope to succeed and grow. It is more that they are trapped in an environment that undermines the ability to stay afloat, much less prosper. They may have had the ability, intelligence, and confidence to keep going, but poverty, on a daily basis, robs them of those skills and we, in turn, lose out because hordes of people who, given the right opportunity , could contribute in a very significant way. shapes, to the world around them.