It’s easy to bash the poor.
People just need to work harder.
Parents should feed their own children. Society should not be forced to pay for their lunches.
Why should I pay taxes, so someone else can stay home and do drugs?
The simplicity of these comments is comforting as it takes the responsibility away from ourselves and places it solely on others, especially other parents. It’s easy to say people should work harder.
It is hard to understand is that not everyone wins the birth lottery.
There are a number of characteristics that we use to define what poverty is, some of the most common include: overcrowding, substandard housing, family turmoil and malnutrition. These characteristics have been identified by the American National Scientific Council as factors that induce “extreme stress.” Such factors have been identified as having a toxic effect on the developing brain, in a similar way that drugs or alcohol might.
When the human brain experiences stress it produces a hormone called cortisol. Brief bursts of the hormone can help a human manage complex, stressful situations. However long term stress and cortisol production can be disastrous. A woman who experiences long term or extreme stress (such as poverty) throughout her pregnancy can produce hormones that will affect the way her baby’s brain develops right through until adulthood.
But exactly how is this baby’s brain affected and what does that actually mean when it reaches adulthood?
If a person’s brain has been undermined through experiences of poverty they can experience a 6% reduction in brain surface area in comparison to those children whose parents earned a higher income. They can suffer long term behavioral and cognitive difficulties (such as lack of impulse control, difficulty concentrating, lower IQ and higher anxiety levels). They are also much more likely to experience negative emotions throughout their life, depression, heart disease and addictions in adulthood.
The crucial point to take away from poverty research is this: poverty perpetuates poverty by acting on the brain and affecting its development.
In New Zealand we are quick to jump on the Mike Hosking bandwagon and claim that poor people are responsible for their choices and that we should withhold certain benefits unless they behave in a certain way e.g. no benefit if you’re abusing drugs. However there is evidence that long term planning is more complicated for those living in poverty because the short term needs are so great.
As said by an individual living in poverty:
“Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It’s why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It’s more basic than food...Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don’t plan long-term because if we do we’ll just get our hearts broken. It’s best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.”
The long term consequences of unprotected sex with a variety of sexual partners can seem irrelevant when indifference, despair and pessimism define your outlook on the future.
Why pay a power bill when your kids need food now?
Why pay your car registration when you won’t be able to afford petrol?
Why go to work when you’ll earn minimum wage and not be able to pay your bills anyway?
For those individuals who have experienced poverty in early development, for those who have experienced the chaotic and unpredictable environments of extreme stress why would rational planning ensure a good long term outcome? When you are out of good options, whatever you do, it is not completely irrational to get what you can now and worry about tomorrow later.
This is not an argument designed to provide a free pass, this is based on scientific evidence that concludes: poverty affects how an individual develops and how they respond to the world. It is an argument for context.
Yes, it’s true, sometimes individuals can break free from the cycle. But instead of holding them as examples and saying: “well some can do it, so others can too”, we need to acknowledge that poverty creates very real barriers to improving the quality of life for New Zealanders.
When society casts blame on parents, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that poverty is an individual’s choice and a result of their lack of work ethic. But given the empirical research we now have access to, this kind of rhetoric is intellectually lazy. We need to recognise and understand that social status and economic success is not simply a direct outcome of hard work.
At a time when inequality is on the rise, policy makers and public figures need to stop using sound bites that blame the poor and start creating policies that actually promote social mobility and inclusiveness. We want New Zealanders to flourish! Both for the sake of individuals, but also for the economic prosperity of New Zealand as a whole. We cannot leave each other behind.
Instead of giving drug tests to people on the benefit we need to understand why they might be taking drugs in the first place. Once we do that, we can put interventionist policies in place that have actually proven cheaper than the current reactive policies.
We also need to consider the long term effects of such policies. For example, some countries have criminalised drug-use during pregnancy, a policy which might seem entirely justifiable. Yet evidence has shown that arrest and incarceration, by triggering the mother’s stress response, can have equally damaging effects on the not yet born child.
Around the world, other countries are leaving New Zealand behind when it comes to caring for children in poverty. Countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands have less than half the number of children experiencing hardship than New Zealand. Our kiwi kids are at a significantly higher risk of living in poverty.
Given that we know poverty perpetuates poverty and that over 200,000 children are currently living in poverty in New Zealand, we must act now. Future generations of New Zealanders are at risk of living in a country riddled with inequality and poverty.The policies that we enact now must be based on evidence not popular sentiment.
Bibliography
Shonkoff, Jack P.Bales, Susan Nall. 2011. "Science Does Not Speak for Itself: Translating Child Development Research for the Public and Its Policymakers." Child Development 82, no. 1: 17-32. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed August 6, 2015).