Why do the poor make poor decisions?
This article tries to shift perception from &quot;poor people make bad decisions because they&#x27;re intrinsically dumb&quot; to &quot;poor people make bad decisions because poverty makes them dumb.&quot; But this is also wrong; the decisions poor people make are, for the most part, sensible decisions given the circumstances they&#x27;re in. Here&#x27;s a list from the article:<p>&gt; &quot;The poor borrow more, save less, smoke more, exercise less, drink more, and eat less healthfully. Offer money management training and the poor are the last to sign up. When responding to job ads, the poor often write the worst applications and show up at interviews in the least professional attire.&quot;<p>Borrow more: because you only need to borrow if you don&#x27;t have money.<p>Save less: because you can only save if you have money.<p>Showing up at interviews in poor attire: because good attire costs money.<p>Eat less healthfully: because healthy food costs more than unhealthy food.<p>Exercise less: because exercising requires the energy that poor diet and the other stresses of poverty sap away.<p>Writing poor job applications: because applications are judged based on whether they sound like something a poor person would write.<p>The only genuinely questionable decisions in the list are smoking and drinking, but even these have sensible explanations that don&#x27;t involve moralizing.<p>I think the real answer is that things have been labelled &quot;poor decisions&quot; not because they are strategically bad choices for the people who actually make them, but because seeing someone make them provides others with evidence that they&#x27;re poor, which is stigmatized.