The
illusion that people are to blame for their own poverty goes back centuries in
our culture.
If you’re poor, many Americans think, it’s your own fault. It’s
a sign of your own moral failing.
I don’t personally believe that, but the idea has roots in our
culture going back centuries.
In The Wealth of Nations, the foundational work of
modern capitalism, Adam Smith extolled the virtues of working hard and being
thrifty with money. That wasn’t just the way to get rich, he reasoned — it was
morally righteous.
Sociologist Max Weber took the idea further in describing what
he called the Protestant work ethic.
To Puritans who believed that one was either predestined for
heaven or for hell, Weber wrote, working hard and accumulating wealth was a
sign of God’s blessing.
Those who got rich, the Puritans thought, must have
been chosen by God for heaven; those who were poor were damned.
John D. Rockefeller, a religious Baptist, thought his
extraordinary wealth was evidence from
God of his righteousness. Fortunately, he took this as a sign
that he should use his money for good.
He gave it to universities and medical
research centers, and his descendants used it for great art museums, national
parks, and more.
But Rockefeller also believed that the poor were often deserving
of their fate. If they’d just worked harder, or budgeted their money wisely,
then they wouldn’t be poor.
Plenty of Americans agree. Sadly, that’s often not the case.
The first factor determining one’s wealth as an adult is an
accident of birth. If you’re born to wealthy parents, you’ll go to better
schools and get better health care. Your odds of success as an adult are higher.
If, on other hand, you’re born to poor parents who must work
multiple jobs instead of staying home to care for you — or who can’t afford
healthy food, medical care, or a house in a good school district — your chances
of earning your way into the middle class as an adult plummet.
In fact, if your parents’ income is in the bottom 20 percent,
there’s a 40 percent chanceyou’ll be stuck in that low-income bracket
for your entire life. Thanks to racism, that figure rises to 50
percent for black people born into poverty.
Indeed, racial disparities crop up even at the bottom of the
ladder.
Due to historic racism and discrimination, data from the
Economic Policy Institute shows, low-income white families tend to be wealthier than
black families making the same income.
Furthermore, whites are more likely to have friends and family who can help them out
of a financial bind.
Finally, thanks to decades of discriminatory housing and lending
practices, black families are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods. That
impacts the quality of the schools they attend, among many other things.
So why can’t a hardworking family get ahead? For one thing, it’s
expensive to be poor.
Try finding an affordable place to live. You need to have enough
cash on hand to pay a deposit. Many apartments require you to prove your income
is 2.5 times the cost of the rent.
Public assistance programs only help the most destitute, and
often don’t provide enough even then.
For the disabled, the situation is worse. In theory, Social
Security provides for those with disabilities.
In reality, getting approved for
disability payments is costly (in both medical and legal fees) and difficult.
Once you get approved, disability payments are low, condemning you to poverty
for life.
In short, there are many reasons why poor Americans are poor. It
doesn’t help that our society thinks it’s their own fault.
OtherWords
columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our
Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org.