4.2. The Problem of Poverty in Psychology - The Psychology of Poverty and Wealth

The problem of poverty in the economic psychology of the West is considered as an independent problem ³⁴ .

Poverty is defined as the inability to maintain a minimum standard of living. There are various theoretical approaches to poverty. When analyzing attitudes towards poverty, there are three groups of its causes:

- individualistic (responsibility for poverty lies with the behavior and personality traits of the poor);

- structural (the responsibility lies with an extremist society and economic forces);

- fatalistic (the cause of poverty is luck and fate).

The study of the personality of poor people, according to scientists, is one of the main contributions of psychology to alleviating the problem of poverty. Personal poverty theories provide contradictory material, but the authors of individual publications and reviews still highlight some of the “constants” of the psychological portrait of people who demonstrate objective or subjectively experienced poverty (a person perceives himself as poor). Consider these persistent characteristics of the poor.