"Poverty is the worst form of violence."
— Mahatma Gandhi
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union address in which he declared a "War on Poverty." This initiative included expanding Social Security benefits, creating Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, and establishing Job Corps, VISTA, federal work-study and Head Start. Wow!
In 2015, it's clear we need to do more: 14.2 percent of U.S. citizens live in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau). Among them are people we don't usually think of as poor: minimum-wage earners, blue-collar workers, adjunct faculty, students and people with chronic health conditions. There are myriad causes of poverty. Surprisingly, the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States is unpaid medical bills. This often leads to difficult decisions over allocation of resources for basic needs. Do we buy food or medicine?
In other areas of the world, things are much worse. My daughter Amy recently returned from 15 months of working in Kenya, where the poverty rate is 42 percent (UNICEF). There, health care, education, clean water and sanitation are luxuries, not basic services. In Kenya, my daughter was often accompanied by private security because public protection of the law is not guaranteed. A growth industry, private security in Africa is seven times more common than public security. And it's not just Kenya. In many developing countries, there is no protection of law. Physical assault, sex trafficking, and enslavement contribute to the perpetuation of poverty, despair, and fear as personal safety lags.
Many people in the United States take public safety for granted. On average, 911 calls in the U.S. are responded to in less than 10 minutes. But safety in our nation's poorer neighborhoods is not assured. According to a study by the Chicago Sun-Times, it takes 911 dispatchers over three times longer to dispatch a police car in the predominantly black and more economically disadvantaged South Side of Chicago than downtown and the North Side.
The divide between the wealthy and the poor has never been greater — and this inequality has significant negative implications for our society. A recent study by Oishi and Kesibir (2015) suggests that globally, greater income inequality (even in the face of economic growth) is associated with lower levels of happiness. As income inequality increases, we also see decreases in physical health, life expectancy, social trust, economic growth and social mobility. Conversely, we also observe increases in drug use, teenage births, violence and people in U.S. prisons.
In groundbreaking research on cognitive differences between the wealthy and the poor, Mullainathan and Shafir (2013) demonstrated that scarcity of anything (money, love, food) makes us less mentally efficient. "Mental bandwidth" is depleted by poverty. Simply put, when we have less mental bandwidth, we lose the cognitive power to manage our day-to-day affairs. As a result, people who live in poverty tend to "live in the moment," and are less future oriented. Immediate survival needs take precedence over long-term planning. Poverty is often stigmatized, and the "poor" often blamed for their circumstances. Mullainathan and Shafir's work suggests that this has less to do with "laziness" than resource allocation by a very tired brain.
Similarly, Paul Piff, PhD, showed that as wealth increases, feelings of compassion and empathy for others decrease as entitlement and self-interest prevail. His experiments on compassion demonstrated that the poor are actually more likely to share their resources with strangers than are wealthier individuals. When privilege and self-interest trump basic human values, what does this reveal about our society?
Many Americans, young and old alike, are getting accustomed to making do with "not enough." This is more than just cutting corners to stretch a dollar, this takes a toll on mental health. The American Dream is alive for some, but slipping out of reach for many more. As psychologists, we must address inequality, build resilience, maintain compassion, and encourage hope as we continue to fight the war on poverty.
Thanks to the APA Committee on Socioeconomic Status, especially Dr. Ramani Durvasula and Dr. Kipp Pietrantonio.
