Monday, June 24, 2019

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Is Poverty Only About Bad Choices?


When I was a teenager, I remember my grandfather would often come for family dinner.  On one occasion at the dinner table, my young sister reported seeing a man that afternoon begging for small change outside a store in the local mall.  She said she had felt very sorry for him.  On her way back to the family car, she had dropped a quarter into his collection box.  She told us it felt good to help someone in need.

At dinner, Grandfather was the first person to react.  "Folks need to stop whining and begging, and get a job.  It's all about taking personal responsibility."

My dad chimed in, saying there is something to the "personal responsibility" narrative, but any of us can also make bad choices in our lives.  He continued, "Self-destructive behaviors ---- such as dropping out of school, hanging out with the wrong type of kids, taking drugs, bearing children when one is not ready, can eventually lead to poverty in adult life."

"So true!" my mother affirmed, "yet researchers are also identifying the roots of these behaviors, and that they are far more complicated than mere "human weakness".

My mother then pointed out the growing evidence that poverty and mental health problems are linked in complex, reinforcing ways.  My mother referred to a Gallop Poll of a few years before which found that people living in poverty were twice as likely to have been diagnosed previously with depression, as other Americans.

It occurred to me, that if one is battling mental health problems, or is a grown-up with traumas like domestic violence (or perhaps witnessing a family member shot dead) aren't you more likely to have trouble in school, to have trouble in relationships?

"Don't forget," offered my dad, "that economic and social stress can rob us of some "cognitive-bandwidth."  Worrying about bills, food or other problems, leaves less capacity to think ahead or to exert self-discipline.  So, it is as if poverty imposes a mental tax."

"Furthermore," said Dad, "when people have an elevated level of stress, they are less willing to delay gratification ---- they become more impatient for immediate rewards, and thus are more prone to "bad" choices.  So, you can see, that a person's circumstances can land them in a situation where it's really hard to make a good decision because the person is so stressed out.  And the decisions they get wrong matter much more because there's less slack to play with."

It was time for dessert, but my mother had something else to say first:  "I wonder whether America's  ideology of social and economic mobility, the "Horatio Alger" notion that people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, may empower some poor people, but leave others feeling like failures, brimming with self-doubt that makes bad choices all the more likely.  Certainly, self-doubt is seen widely among the poor."

Later, as I thought about our dinner conversation, it occurred to me that what caused the poverty problem for many of the "street poor" (besides the person's circumstances)  is an element inside them, and changing that internal element is the only way many of them will ever reduce their level of poverty.  Perhaps my grandfather had been correct at the start when he thought the solution was simply about "personal responsibility."  It's just that he had been so very simplistic in his view.  For example, an emphasis on developing personal responsibility is part of any 12-Step program, which tries to confront alcoholism, but these programs also have many other facets, including weekly meetings and peer support.

But, for society to place the blame entirely on the individual seems to me to me a cop-out.  Our culture is cluttered with excuses for bad behavior.  It's usually said to be the perpetrator's own fault.  In some sense that may be true.  But the doer's bad choices are real, have consequences, and to some extent were shaped by factors outside the doer's personality.

So, as long as we are talking about personal responsibility, let's examine our own.  Is our responsibility greater than merely putting a few coins in the street beggar's outstretched hand?  Do we have a collective responsibility to provide more of a fair start in life, to all, so that children are less propelled toward  bad choices that may lead to their poverty later on.

The evidence is overwhelming, it seems to me, that we too often fail many kids before they fail is.  Certain public and private programs, however, could actually save public welfare money in the long-run.

Why aren't we more supportive of public and/or private programs that would unblock the taking of personal responsibility, before folks find themselves living in poverty?
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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage in you some spiritual growth this Summer.
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