A framework for understanding poverty
People in poverty face challenges virtually unknown to those in middle class or wealth--challenges from both obvious and hidden sources. The reality of being poor brings out a survival mentality, and turns attention away from opportunities taken for granted by everyone else. If you work with people from poverty, some understanding of how different their world is from yours will be invaluable. Whether you're an educator--or a social, health, or legal services professional--this breakthrough book gives you practical, real-world support and guidance to improve your effectiveness in working with people from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Since 1995 A Framework for Understanding Poverty has guided hundreds of thousands of educators and other professionals through the pitfalls and barriers faced by all classes, especially the poor. Carefully researched and packed with charts, tables, and questionnaires, Framework not only documents the facts of poverty, it provides practical yet compassionate strategies for addressing its impact on people's lives.
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What Hacker News says
- Yes, I meant the behavior pattern has been known, not the bio-chemical cause.
Read A Framework For Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne. It explains this phenomenon and the book dates to the 1990s. Basically that the stress of growing up in poverty stunts your ability to plan for the future and you choose immediate gratification over longer-term strategic saving.
- But that's not what happens.
I recommend reading "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Ruby Payne. It's a really insightful book on the cycle of poverty and the incentives at work... anti-social punishment really isn't part of it.
- I would recommend reading these books by one Ruby Payne which explore such differences in detail:
A framework for understanding poverty: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1929229488/
Crossing the Tracks for Love: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/192922933X/
Hidden Rules of Class at Work: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1929229070/
In particular, she goes in to these very concerns about how on has to change their identity and mindset from their old world to be in the new world.
- Thank you. People live in poverty because they don't know how to not live in poverty. We think we can buy our way out of the problem by providing housing, foodstamps, welfare (or, as proposed, scrapping all those things and providing a "basic income") but all this really does is make poverty a bit more comfortable without actually teaching those in poverty that everything they know about how to live is wrong and counterproductive and contrasting that with what works.
From the article: A Basic Income Guarantee would establish economic security as a universal right. It gives each of us the assurance that, no matter what happens, we won’t go hungry.
I don't see that it provides that guarantee at all. It doesn't mandate that the money be spent on food, housing, or anything sensible. One of the things that people in living in long-term (generational) poverty tend to do is to immediately spend any money they get on "escaping" the drudgery of their survival, e.g. on alcohol or drugs, flashy jewelry or clothing, gambling or other entertainment. It simply doesn't occur to them that money can be managed, invested, or saved. If you don't break this way of looking at life, then the money will be gone in a week or two (or less) and they'll struggle for the rest of the month until the next payday comes, and repeat the cycle again.
[Edit: Cite for my last paragraph: A Framework For Understanding Poverty, Ruby K. Payne]
