The Causes of Poverty (26): Hereditary Poverty, Another Poverty Trap

Fra Angelico's portrait of Saint Mark

(source)

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them; but you do not always have Me. Mark 14:7

For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, “You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land”. Deuteronomy 15:11

I’ve discussed poverty traps before on this blog (here, here and here), but I think I failed to mention the most important one: hereditary poverty. As a result of having parents who are poor, children

• receive substandard education because they enroll in substandard schools (if at all)
• may be forced to quit school early and start working
• do not receive quality healthcare (because of the costs)
• are more likely to be obese, with negative consequences for their health
• have a lower birth weight, something which also has a negative impact on health.

Growing up in poor families has negative effects on children’s education and health, and these effects in turn make it more likely that these children grow up to become poor as well. And their children will go through the same process, and so on. Hence the concept of hereditary poverty.

Just a few more words on the effect of substandard education. The quality of schools (or better the cost of good schools) and the element of child labor aren’t the only factors limiting the education levels of children in poor families. An interesting article in The Economist (gated) points to effects discovered by neuroscience. It seems that stress, induced by poverty, lowers memory capacity, and this lowered memory capacity makes it more difficult to learn and to obtain a good education as a means to escape poverty traps. It’s been well known for a while that stress lowers memory capacity (it reduces the volume of the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, parts of the brain associated with memory). However, Evans and Schamberg (see the paper here) showed that stress caused by poverty reduces memory capacity. First they showed that poverty is correlated with higher stress, and then that higher stress is correlated with lower memory capacity. Comparisons of the memory capacities of poor and middle class people showed indeed a difference in memory capacity, and this is caused by poverty induced stress rather than other elements of poverty. Poverty causes stress, which reduces memory, which in turn makes it harder to learn, which in turn makes it more difficult to escape a poverty trap. How does poverty cause stress? Well, there’s the obvious cause: financial insecurity. But low self-esteem caused by poverty (including for children in poor families) also seems to contribute. See this paper for instance.

the vicious cycle of hereditary poverty

The poor indeed will always be with us. At least if we don’t help them to get out of the traps in which they find themselves.

For those who wonder why I believe poverty is a human rights issue, go here. And here are other human rights quotes.