Understanding the causes of poverty entails first understanding the condition symbolized by the ambiguous word. Dominant in modern discourse is poverty defined as an economic state, as a concrete measurement of income and the adequacy of that income to meet basic needs. Although one component of poverty is certainly the inability to meet basic needs, the term poverty expresses a broader condition: deprivation of agency, power, and freedom. Not only does poverty deprive its victims of their power to house, feed, clothe, and heal themselves, but it also deprives them of control over all aspects of their lives. Earning enough money to live above the poverty threshold in the United States (an income of $10,830 per year) might possibly allow an individual enough food to survive, a room to live in, and minimal healthcare, but such an income certainly restricts his or her ability to engage in intellectual activities, to function as a social individual, to engage in interests and hobbies, and to all leisurely, non-survival pursuits. Rather than being a measurement of physical wellbeing, poverty should be understood to refer to an individual’s socioemotional, spiritual, and mental wellbeing.
In searching for the “cause” of poverty (though the cause should not be assumed to be a singular, essentialist cause but the interaction between a multiplicity of agents) it is imperative to understand poverty as a comparative, rather than an absolute, term. Poverty is visible only when people and their lifestyles are compared: the Bronx versus Manhattan, the descendents of the Mayflower immigrants versus the children of Mexican immigrants, field workers in Louisiana to field workers in Kenya. In the United States, poverty means the inability to afford a flat-screen television while in Nigeria poverty means the inability to afford bread. While in an American family poverty’s effects may be seen in a father’s inability to provide a high-quality education for his son, poverty in an Albanian family may be evident in a father’s inability to take the customary morning tea break with his daughter. Seeing poverty as a comparative term referencing an individual’s inability to assert his will on his circumstances, realizing its inconsistencies of definition even when stretched from one borough of New York to another, begins to crack away at the absolute, linear, factual face it presents.
In order to find the causes of poverty, the mechanisms of structural violence and the roots of vulnerability, one must examine no factor alone, but the nexus of dependent agents in the areas of academia, technology, society, ecology, culture, and politics. The causes of poverty are the factors that make up the entire world system of economics, politics, and culture. Locating these agents and causes demands asking substantive questions: rather than, “Why do some people have low incomes?” ask instead, “Why are they malnourished, sick, and uneducated?” Money is not the cause of poverty, though the questioning its unequal distribution brings us much closer to finding poverty’s roots. In finding those roots, we are forced to confess that as participants in the world system living in relationship with agents, we all partake in the perpetuation of poverty. However, while this revelation may result in guilt, it should also result in freedom: as agents in the system causing poverty around the globe, we are not only agents of perpetuation but agents of liberation. If we collectively and individually are the cause of poverty, then we collectively and individually are the key to finding a true solution.
