Part of the saga "why does this sub hate libertarians? they have the most common sense economic policies".

You can find episode 1 here and episode 2 here

This thread is about this comment from our main protagonist, /u/CanadianAsshole1 .

I know next to nothing about the subject so prepare yourself for a low quality R1, but apparently /u/gorbachev has gold to give and the fact that I was able to find so many papers by just searching for a few minutes was enough motivation to at least try.

1. There are a lot of external feedback loops that prevent the poor from accessing a higher socioeconomic status, called poverty traps

• Bio-physical feedback loops in which an initial environmental shock and the poverty it induces undercut the productive capacity of natural resource systems, trapping previously non-poor individuals in persistent poverty;

• Psychological feedback loops in which an economic shock induces depression, undercuts cognitive functioning or pro-social behavior, and, or reduces aspirations or otherwise changes preferences in such a way that formerly non-poor individuals become chronically poor through loss of human capability or desire;

• Direct loss of human capital, or shock-induced reductions in health and education investments, that pushes previously non-poor families into perpetual inter-generational poverty; and,

• Imperfect financial markets that can create multiple equilibrium systems that can trap previously non-poor families in a situation of persistent poverty following a once-off shock that pushes families’ productive assets and abilities below the critical levels needed to strive toward a nonpoor equilibrium.

[...] to the extent that market failures are the root cause of poverty traps, systemic interventions that address the underlying structural causes of poverty traps are likely to generate indirect, general equilibrium benefits – e.g., in wage labor markets – that almost surely dominate the direct effects of small-scale interventions that benefit just a few direct program participants

2. Young people are strongly influenced by the perception of the return of investment of education (which is low when their parents income is low)

Specifically, we posit that greater levels of income inequality could lead low-income youth to perceive a lower return to investment in their own human capital.

low-income youth are more likely to drop out of school if they live in a place with a greater gap between the bottom and middle of the income distribution

3. Child development and exposure to a variety of different skills as well as diverse mentoring is an essential factor for getting out of poverty

Mentoring, parenting, and attachment are essential features of successful families and interventions to shape skills at all stages of childhood.

4. Poor people have an incorrect optimistic perception of their future chances and prospects

Americans are more optimistic than Europeans about intergenerational mobility, and they are too optimistic relative to actual mobility in the U.S., especially about the probability of a child from a family in the bottom quintile making it to the top quintile– the “American dream.” We show that, paradoxically, optimism is particularly high in U.S. states where actual mobility is particularly low

5. Poor people are voting against their interests because of that incorrect perception of their chances, which fosters policies that tend to limit mobility

When social mobility is endogenized, our model identifies new political economic forces limiting the amount of mobility in society – because the middle class will lose out from mobility at the bottom and because a peripheral coalition between the rich and the poor may oppose mobility at the top.

6. (not nber but quite important) One of the most defining factors of social mobility is the neighborhood/commuting zone, which is strongly indicative of environment (

High mobility areas have (1) less residential segregation, (2) less income inequality, (3) better primary schools, (4) greater social capital, and (5) greater family stability

), commuting times and easy access to public transportation being determinant in the ability to get out of poverty.

EDIT: to be clear, this is not a RI about whether the poor should suffer or not, which is a normative claim, but about whether the poor are poor because of bad lifestyle choices or mostly exogenous factors, which was /u/CanadianAsshole1's claim.