This article was taken from the January 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Poverty means noisier and less safe neighbourhoods, greater stress, unequal access to quality medical and dental care, banking and credit, healthy foods, childcare, affordable housing, insurance and much more. Then there are society's low expectations, demeaning stereotypes, prejudice and stigma.
And it gets worse. Living in poverty requires the juggling of sporadic incomes and a perpetual struggle with difficult trade-offs. The human cognitive system has limited capacity, and focusing on the problems that come with having too little grabs substantial mental resources and leaves less mind for everything else. Pressing budgetary concerns can thus impede cognitive function in all aspects of life. In one study, shoppers contemplated everyday financial challenges that are minor hurdles for the rich but that present serious concerns to the poor.
Participants were tested on two measures of cognitive capacity: executive control (the mind's ability to guide thought and action in accordance with internal goals); and fluid intelligence (analysing and solving novel problems on the fly).
In the face of modest financial challenges, the rich and the poor were equally effective. But when
they were preoccupied by the financially challenging scenarios, the poor did significantly worse. When concerns of scarcity captured the mind, the poor had notably reduced fluid intelligence scores and exhibited diminished executive control.
This also appears to be true for people who are not "abjectly" poor, just budget--constrained. When they were preoccupied by their finances they did less well on the cognitive tests, and the effect was substantial. It was bigger than the impact of a whole night with no sleep. It was comparable to losing 13 IQ points, enough to take you from a "superior" IQ score to "average" or from average to "borderline deficient".
Studies conducted with students in top US universities and with farmers in India reveal similar patterns: people who proved highly capable in contexts of abundance became less capable in contexts of scarcity. Less--capable performance is observed not among poor people, but among people inhabiting contexts of poverty.
And inequality is likely to make all this worse. When you're poor, so many things that are easily afforded by many become temptations that must be resisted. The same good -- going to the cinema, buying your child a present, having a lunch with a friend -- which is a trivial consideration for those who have plenty, becomes something to be resisted when you don't have much. When there's abundance, temptation is less costly and there is less of it. When you're poor, temptation is everywhere. And no matter how many times you manage to resist it, occasionally you will give in.
And it will cost you. And others will observe with disapproval and disdain.
Some inequality is unavoidable. But it would be a lot less painful if those at the bottom were not so many and not so down.
Because when you're down, life is tough. Inequality makes it tougher.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
