Cyclical Poverty Quotes

The scarcity trap captures this notion we see again and again in many domains. When people have very little, they undertake behaviors that maintain or reinforce their future disadvantage. If you have very little, you often behave in such a way so that you'll have little in the future.

Mothers born on relief have their babies on relief.

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

When I was a kid, I got caught shoplifting by a store security guard in Ellensburg. The next time I saw that store guard was when I got thrown in jail again - this time for not paying court fees. The guy happened to be in jail, too, right next to me. That's what Eastern Washington is like - you never get too far away from anybody.

Poverty does not create our social problems...our social problems create our poverty.

People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better.

Children of those who have been incarcerated are five times more likely to go to prison than children of parents who have never been incarcerated. The sins of the father visiting the child.

I can't go to school, cause I don't have a gun. I ain't got a gun, cause I ain't got a job. I ain't got a job, cause I can't go to school.

Too often, while well-intentioned, our poverty programs fail the poor. They fail them by keeping them in cycles of dependency.

I do not want to be cynical, but if developing nations are kept backward by being told, again and again, you belong to the poor and you are there, where you actually belong, then nothing will change.