“the poor choice of being a poor person”
A ‘poor person’ can be defined as an individual who is unable to meet his/her basic need, whereas a ‘poor choice’ refers to a decision that leads to negative outcomes often leading to poverty .Almost every choice made by an individual with lesser income looks poor in the eyes of a person with a greater income. For example when you look at a drunk man on the street begging for money, that is a poor choice you think, to yourself –instead of using it for alcohol he should save that money and he wouldn’t be so poor anymore but humans as we might be aware of, are not rational decision markers.
Primarily system 1 and system 2 are always working behind to make these decisions or choices in our life.
Here, system 1 refers to our fast automatic thinking which works quickly and with little effort and system 2 refers to our slow deliberate and logical thinking .
Theoretically, system 2 should be the right response or way of thinking –but most poor people don’t really have a choice .Being poor means having less money to spend but it also means having more bandwidth to manage more.
Bandwidth is the mental capacity a person has for attention, decision making and self control at any given time. A poor person has a much more limited bandwidth due to several economic challenges that lead to hunger pain and sleep deprivation but they also have to face challenges that require a larger capacity of bandwidth in a day to day basis as compared to a person with sufficient income.
The risk exposure of a poor person is also greater, and the bounce back ability to recover from such decision is also tougher. Wealthy people use money as substitute for bandwith. Buffers such as insurance , savings ,digital banking are all used by wealthy people to protect their assets and face less burden on their bandwidth.
Poor people have to manage everything on their own and face the same or even higher level of difficulty problems with a limited bandwidth which occurs due to economic challenges which makes this a generational cycle that is hard to get out of.
Poor people often have to face high stakes problems such as bureaucracy (ration/government affairs),health crisis due to poor living conditions(without insurance) and other social safety risks(such as discrimination )on a daily basis with a limited bandwidth.
In India, being poor is a generational issue also because of casteism. There are 381 million recorded poor people in India s population. 5 out of 6 of them belong from lower tribes or castes. Caste and Tribal affiliations are included in indicators of poverty and are prevalent line of social stratification in India.
Poverty stricken lower caste population, especially women, often face the most extreme forms of violence and discrimination. Government tries to help marginalised groups by giving them reservations in different sectors of education ,health and bureaucracy department but it only leads to resentment among non beneficiary group who feel excluded. Although the government is doing a great job by providing these opportunities ,instead of focusing on who gets reserved seats, the focus should move towards how to give everyone equal starting points — through education opportunities ,social change and economic support which can help alleviate a poor man from making a poor choice.
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The priority should shift from economic growth to a developmental improvement in poverty in India.
It is not that a poor man is making a poor choice rather there is a paradox of choice overload. Choices are getting rethought by poor people but there are no better alternatives that lead to a favourable outcome. They rely on habits instead of decision making to alleviate from stressors in their daily life.
The preference is given to an immediate crisis over a long term crisis. This is because most times their survival depends on this daily crisis.
Coping mechanism of a poor person often includes routine work, shared community and fatalism .A shared community is very beneficial for a poor person like sharing clothes childcare and resources but it also makes them stuck to that social strata because of cycles of dependence.
Fatalism might reduce immediate stress but it discourages long term planning and thus reduce long term upward mobility in the social stratification
Dwelling is a luxury. A poor person is so busy in their daily struggles that there is little space for introspection. We can sit here and discuss poor economics but a poor man simply does not have the time for that.
He does not know why is he poor ,or how is he poor ,he only knows that he is poor ; especially when society reminds him time and time again.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Schilbach, F., Schofield, H., & Mullainathan, S. (2016, May). The psychological lives of the poor. American Economic Review, 106(5), 435–440. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.p20161101
Edubirdie. (n.d.). Caste system as the cause of generational poverty in India: Analytical essay. Edubirdie. https://hub.edubirdie.com/examples/caste-system-as-the-cause-of-generational-poverty-in-india-analytical-essay/
Tirado, L. (2013, November 22). This is why poor people’s bad decisions make perfect sense. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-poor-peoples-bad-decisions-make-perfect-sense_b_4326233
