The Poverty Cycle

                                                                                                

(another of my essays from The 2003 Colby College Collection)

What causes poverty?  Is poverty perpetuated in families from generation to generation?  While poverty cannot be easily traced or limited to just a few causes, there are several that seem to be central:  single-parent families, lack of education, and unemployment (Weidenbaum 223).  However, while these are important, there are also covert psychological factors that help perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

            Some researchers claim that poverty does not beget more poverty and wish to dispel the myth that the welfare cycle perpetuates itself.  They cite several studies that support this conclusion:

Even before welfare was time-limited, a substantial majority of those who collected welfare got off the rolls within two years, and hardly any stayed on the rolls continuously for more than eight years.  (Edin and Lein 4)

However, even if the majority climb out of poverty, there is still the sizable minority to consider, those for whom poverty becomes the inescapable, vicious cycle. 

            Some who live in the grip of poverty “lack the inner resources to seize their chance” to escape poverty (Magnet 213).  What could those inner resources be?  Myron Magnet identifies them as “a self-defeating set of values and attitudes” and “an impoverished intellectual and emotional development” (213). 

Perhaps we should first further define Magnet’s “self-defeating set of values and attitudes” (213).  I have observed this depressing state firsthand.  Take, for example, a Christmas party for Head Start parents in Independence, Missouri that I was part of in the mid 1980s.  At that party, the Head Start staff distributed beautiful gift items that Hallmark had generously donated:  wrapping paper, Christmas bulbs, paperweights, jewelry boxes, and more.   However, what happened during the gift distribution shocked me.  Some parents loudly complained about their gifts or became angry if they didn’t receive the color or print of wrapping paper they preferred.  Others were pushy, grabbing items from the box to make sure they got exactly what they wanted. 

Why would these parents act so childishly and selfishly?  I would explain by adding my own interpretation of “self-defeating.”  Being poor is hard.  Not having financial control forces people into a beggar’s mode of existence:  applying for food stamps, energy assistance, and commodities as well as asking charitable organizations for help when emergencies arise.  That “begging” becomes a way of survival for those whose money doesn’t come close to paying the bills and buying the food.  Eventually, those “beggars” develop a victim’s mindset that tells them they deserve to be helped, that it is their right to be helped because they are helpless to help themselves, and that it is others’ responsibility to help them.

Miles Shores explains this demeaning cycle quite eloquently:

Repeated experiences of loss of control lead to a state of learned helplessness that interferes with the ability to seek and make use of opportunities to exercise control.  Eventually, this becomes a persistent motivational deficit and is associated with resignation and depression. (317)

That sense of victimization or “learned helplessness” is accompanied by the demoralizing and hopeless situations the poor must deal with on a daily basis, which serve merely to reinforce the sense of helplessness. Children naturally pick up on their parents’ attitudes, thus sealing the vicious cycle of poverty. 

            Besides “self-defeating” attitudes, “impoverished intellectual and emotional development” contribute to the poverty cycle (Magnet 213).  Some people are poor because they lack the mental acuity and emotional stability to get or keep a decent-paying job.  In other situations, parents who feel helpless and depressed are less likely to stimulate and enrich their children’s minds and emotions.  Consumed by the cares of the day and the financial struggle to survive, they have few inner resources left for their children.  Those children, ill-equipped to face life’s challenges, may grow up to become adults who find it difficult to hold down a job.  Thus the cycle continues.

            Why people become poor and stay poor can never be reduced into a simplistic formula.  Many factors perpetuate poverty.  Some of those factors are outside of anyone’s control, while others can be addressed.  Though less obvious than issues of unemployment, single parenthood, or insufficient education,  “self-defeating values” as well as “impoverished intellectual development” can be insidious factors in the poverty cycle.

Works Cited

Edin, Katherine, and Laura Lein.  Making Ends Meet:  How

Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work.  New York:  Russell Sage, 1996.

Magnet, Myron.  “A Lack of Moral Values Created the

Underclass.”  Poverty.  Opposing Viewpoints Series.  Ed. Katie de Koster.  San Diego:  Greenhaven, 1994.  210-16.

Weidenbaum, Murray.  “Lack of Commitment Perpetuates the

Underclass.”  Poverty  Opposing Viewpoints Series.  Ed. Katie de Koster.  San Diego:  Greenhaven, 1994.  221-24.