The poor: by chance or by choice?

[Economist]

This sounds a bit as letting 4-year old kids cross freely the roads. You can say that those kids that wanted to play with their life and didn't pay attention to the traffic lights got crushed, too bad for them, but it was their choice. And forgetting to say that to some kids nobody ever explained them what the traffic lights meant.

We're not really talking about 4 year old kids here. By the time most kids are like 8, their parents don't worry about them crossing the road freely. By that age, most parents give their kids the responsibility to walk or ride their bike around the neighboor and trust that their kid knows not to go out in the road without looking both ways. Besides, a lot of people learn this even if they have irresponsible parents. When someone gets to middle school and especially high school, it seems that they should have some understanding of how important education is. In fact, if a parent has to motivate you to study, you might not care all that much about school. The hardest working people in college seem to be the people who really care about education. People who love studying physics, math, economics, or any other subject because they really enjoy it and learning the subject has intrinsic value to them.

Now, it is my impression that most people who end up in terminal poverty and with a total lack of basic education went through the last road. It wasn't *their* fault to have been put on that track, right?

This may be your impession, but you could also be wrong. Maybe the situation you just laid out (about the kid who hangs with gang bangers and gets beat by his dad) is not as strongly correlated with poverty as you think. I don't doubt that there is some relationship, but I don't know how strong. Just like I know plenty of kids who came from educated middle class households, who went to college mainly so they could get drunk, party, and meet people of the opposite sex. I'm definitely not saying your wrong, it's just that what you've stated is more of an empirical question, and one that I haven't seen seriously explored.

Besides, even if you do find some correlation, it doesn't tell you exactly why it exists. It seems very plausible that people from poor families may be much less educated because they go to the worst public schools. Maybe it's very difficult to succeed in college when you went to horrible schools your whole life. This is just anecdotal, but I've read stories about inner city high schools graduating honor roll students who only read at the 8th grade level. Imagine if you thought you were doing well in school your whole life, and you graduated with an A average, but then you went to college and found out that it was all a joke, and you weren't prepared to compete at the college level at all.

I believe that it's a combination of chance and choice, although choice seems to be more of a factor in my opinion. I think many people attribute poverty mostly to chance, and I often wonder if this perpetuates the situation. For example, when some poor kid is getting in trouble at school, and maybe even in some trouble with the law, and then he hears many people saying that "it's not his faulty" and "he can't be held accountable because it's not a choice," I wonder if this just perpetuates the situation. In a sense, he is not being held accountable for his actions, and even more importantly these people are convincing him that his actions are outside of his control, and telling him that he is destined to be an uneducated, troubled, poor kid because he grew up in the wrong environment. If he buys into all of that, then I can't imagine how he'd have any hope, motivation, or desire.

 

[Dale]

This sounds a bit as letting 4-year old kids cross freely the roads. ... Now, it is my impression that most people who end up in terminal poverty and with a total lack of basic education went through the last road. It wasn't *their* fault to have been put on that track, right ?

IMO, that is a facetious argument and also highly demeaning to the poor. Are you really trying to equate the mental capacity and ability to reason of a poor adult to that of a 4-year-old child?

A 4-year-old's brain has not finished developing, they still think magically, egocentrically, etc. Even a completely uneducated adult has at least developed the ability to think abstractly, reason, and assess risk/reward. If they have not developed those abilities then they are severely mentally retarded or mentally ill and, I agree, should be cared for like we would care for a child (and for the same reason).

However, if they are normal adults then they need to take responsibility for their own actions and lives. Many people (in the US) have made the choice to rise from "poverty", including myself and people with terrible parents and educations. The choice to avoid personal responsibility and blame their situation on parents or background is still a choice.