Self-Inflicted Poverty

While reading Jeanette Walls' memoir The Glass Castle, I found that her description of the poverty her family lived in changed some of my former opinions about people living below the poverty level, or at least made me consider a new perspective. As a strictly liberal person (in case those of you who know me haven't been able to guess!), I surprised even myself when I realized I had little or no sympathy for Rex and Rose Mary Walls. As the memoir developed, I grew increasingly more frustrated and impatient with them, at times nearing the point of downright anger. The attitude and mindset that the couple held pertaining to their poverty was aggravating enough, but when they decided to have children and raise a family in such conditions, I was infuriated. As two able-bodied adults, capable of improving their quality of living at least to the level of being able to put food on the table, I feel they lacked the maturity and the drive to change their situation, if only for the sake of their children. They stuck their noses up at countless opportunities to stabilize their lifestyle and in doing so, inflicted the suffering of their own lazy poverty upon their children.

As I began to do more research on the matter of "chosen" poverty versus inevitable poverty, I obviously found many, many situations in which poverty in not a chosen of self-inflicted lifestyle but an inescapable plague passed down from many different causes, including war, disability, social class, etc. However, I also found an alarming number of circumstances that, to me, implied a negligence on the behalf of the poverty-stricken individual rather than an inability to escape the situation. For example, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a new welfare plan for NYC in which families will receive monetary rewards for specified tasks that they perform. Attending a parent-teacher conference, for example, will result in a $25 reward, holding a full time job will result in $150 a month, and the list goes on. Why are we giving people an incentive to perform tasks that they can and SHOULD be doing without an additional prize at the end? Shouldn't the motivation stem from the benefits that are gained by doing these things, not by bribery? To me, this welfare plan not only proves the existence of a poverty onset by laziness, but it encourages it. When an outside party is working harder to improve someone's life than the individual themself is, the balance has been offset and something is wrong.

On the flip side of "chosen" poverty, there are those who do nothing to escape their poverty because they are content in the lifestyle they live. They do not ask for "handouts" and even refuse help when it is offered. This is the mindset of many people in India who live below what we in America would consider the poverty level. To us, their lifestyle is completely undesirable and we long to be able to "help" them. The slum of Dharavi inside the capital of Mumbai is a prime example of such a clash in mentalities. One wealthy, westernized Indian man wishes to revamp the entire, huge slum and supposedly improve the lives of the many people who live there. Nearly all citizens of the slum, however, protest such a change and resent the man for attempting to do so. They are proud of their homes and their lives, and do not wish to see the lifestyle they grew up with be completely turned upside down. It is not laziness that provokes them not to change but contentment.

After my exposure to this new side of poverty in both Walls' memoir and in recent articles that correlate to it, I was very surprised to see such a mentality in some individuals. I personally feel that if poverty is to be a choice, it needs to be a personal one that will affect no one else. The moment another friend or family member becomes involved, especially a child, it is time to make sacrifices to ensure that every opportunity is available to them, regardless of your personal choices.