To think money ends poverty- not education, not mindset, not budgeting advice, just actual money?

[WildHazelCritic]

I keep seeing discussions about “breaking the poverty cycle” or helping people escape hardship and the solutions are always long-term or conditional: learn to budget, go back to school, change your mindset. But poverty is often just not having enough money. And people giving money - whether through better wages, benefits, or direct support, would make the biggest difference. AIBU to think we over complicate it because people are uncomfortable with the idea of redistribution or just giving people what they need?

Yes decent public services are essential. I'd add access to affordable housing as an essential service. My nan thought she won in life when her private rented slum was condemned and she was housed in a council house.

I don't think anyone would dispute that having more money than they currently have would make life for any individual or family better, but you are naively oversimplifying things to say that education, budgeting advice, attitude to money and financial advice are all part of the equation.
Two families with the same income can live very differently due to their attitude towards spending vs saving, and budgeting vs 'living for today', and what is and isn't important when you have to choose between spending on things.

For me it was education and a whole lot of luck. Education + luck can end poverty, but education alone rarely does. Anyone who says it’s just education and luck played no role in them getting out of poverty is delusional and probably thinks they’re the dogs bollocks all round. It’s money most of the time though for sure.

Budgets and breaking bad financial habits really did help, but a lot of people in poverty don’t have access to the right advice. Yes you’ve got your Martian Lewis and other resources like that, but if I didn’t have my step mum to sit down with me and go through my finances when I was 18 and moving out I wouldn’t be where I am. It was literally just luck that my dad was with someone who actually 1) knew what she was on about and 2) cared enough to help me. Sometimes you need some real, personal, hard hitting finance advice, delivered to you at a level you can understand.

Nope. There is a theory that if you took all the money in the world and divided it up equally amongst the population, it would be x amount of time and the rich would be rich again and the poor would be poor.

sorry if this has been mentioned already. I haven’t read the whole thread.

There is very definitely an underclass who are raised generation upon generation who don't see a value in bettering themselves.

And yet time and time again on here people, who are by no means part of any underclass, complain they don’t see the point in working, stating their standard of living is lower than it should be, moaning about loosing child benefit, complaining about the tax cliff edge at £100k. It’s not an “underclass” thing to complain about not getting what you think you deserve, or trying to work the system to get more for yourself.

In the immediate giving someone lots of money would end their poverty but the world isn't set up to enable everyone to be given enough money just like that. Economies have to develop and grow to create more wealth and this is where education, and healthcare imo, help.

Completely agree. People always think the answer lies in helping people climb out of and away from poverty. Which at its most successful only works for individuals, but doesn't tackle the problem on a societal level, because as you rightly say, there's only so many well paid jobs to go round. The answer lies not in lifting individuals out of the environment in which they're poor, but enriching the environment they are in.

I was in poverty as my ex-husband left me to bring up 3 autistic children on my own, my education was of no use to me as I didn't have the time or resources to use it.

Education can get individual people out of poverty, but it won’t change the systemic problems.

There will always need to be people emptying the bins, stacking shelves and wiping people’s bums - if you work full time in a dual income household, you shouldn’t be “living in poverty” (meaning food insecurity, not being able to pay your utility bills - not “only one holiday a year”). And yet so many are.

If money doesn’t fix anything, how did Blair/Brown get so many kids out of poverty, so quickly, and why have the numbers rocketed since austerity? People aren’t less educated than 20 years ago - quite the reverse.

For me it was education and a whole lot of luck. Education + luck can end poverty, but education alone rarely does.

Absolutely. Education and luck combined certainly were what raised me out of poverty. The luck of having parents who instilled a strong work ethic, being in the right place at the right time to take advantage of various opportunities, being able to afford to pay for a lot of university education, entering a profession I happened to be good at. And yes, lots of hard work, but the hard work would have been to no avail without the luck.

And you shouldn’t need top up benefits to achieve a basic standard of living for two people in full time minimum wage jobs.

I grew up in a fairly stereotypical single parent household.

My mother was from a middle class background, but she didn't get any qualifications beyond O Levels and my dad was a horrible man to whom she wasn't married. She's not stupid but she is emotionally unstable, which led her to make some terrible personal choices, and is probably the main reason for her poverty. Her parents didn't teach her how to budget, but you don't have to be financially savvy to manage money better than she does. Education didn't save her from poverty.

I benefitted from having well educated parents in that I wasn't intimidated by books or classrooms, but it didn't keep me out of poverty. I have a cognitive impairment which means that in a lot of ways, I'm very, very stupid, and it's kept me from getting a good job.

To sum that up, you might have to be neurotypical and emotionally stable to fully benefit from a decent standard of education, and moreover, the working class is poorer now than it's been for a very long time: the basic rate of Universal Credit isn't enough to live on, work is low paid and insecure, there's less and less social housing, and private renting is really expensive and insecure. Parents and children up against all that might be less able to apply themselves to getting or providing a good education.

No idea if this is helpful. In summary money doesn't help

I work with people leaving prison. They will say they are great at budgeting as they have barely any money in prison. They will be given access to a lot of free academic and vocational training. What stops them from getting that job (often in the trades where they can easily out earn me and where their criminal record is not too much of a hinderance)? A job that would give financial security and end their poverty cycle? Themselves.

Those from a poorer/ less educated background where family have been on benefits for years, don't seem to have that ability to keep on applying for jobs. They have the course certificates, the cv, they have a guaranteed job interview. But they struggle to keep the momentum of looking on job websites or call agencies. So they fall back on familiar patterns. And blame others for themselves not working. Because that's easier.
Add to that an addiction and you're screwed.

The wealthier/ educated prison leavers are more resourceful and will seek out work they can do. they are surrounded by people who work so they want to fit in with them and pretend their offence never happened. Becuase the last thing they want to be is on benefits or poor. And they do not want to accept their offence. They often moan about how great their life was before i came along. That's very much of note: it's rare for me to hear "I had a great life and then I ruined it and I deserve the loss of my old life" These people will not stay poor for long.

Giving people money doesn't cure poverty, it only helps alleviate the symptoms. You need both parts in parallel, immediate relief and long term education. It also needs political will. At the moment, there is no incentive for low paying employers to increase wages, because in work benefits top people up for them.

One of my favourite charities is Send A Cow, now rebranded as The Ripple Effect. Their origin was providing an in-calf heifer to impoverished people in Uganda, particularly to women. Once the calf was born, there was milk to feed the family and to sell to others, a calf to grow and breed. They provide education alongside the cow, so that one animal can grow into a business and the recipients educate others in turn. It isn't an instant fix, but it is sustainable.

Anyway, point is, just giving poor people money doesn't help them long term. Giving them the means to earn their own, does.

Overcoming poverty and financial hardship is much more complicated than just giving people more money. Whilst that may help alleviate the immediate concerns, if you don't address the root causes then the person / family will quickly find themselves back in poverty.

I work for a children's charity and we support children and their families living in poverty and the reasons for this are complex and multifaceted and often heart breaking. It may be through lack of education, disability / long-term illness, caring responsibilities, escaping domestic abuse, immigration issues, human trafficking, inability to escape debt and many other reasons. In the area I work in, generational poverty, low aspirations and poor social mobility is also a contributory factor.

Families are much more likely to be in poverty if they are single parents, if they have children under 5, if they are disabled or care for a disabled child, if they have 3+ children or if they are BAME.

@Strawber hope everything works out for you

My parents both grew up in poverty. My dad won a place at a grammar school. My mum won a place at a private school as "poor bright kid propping up the grades of the thick rich kids". They were both the first in their families to go to university, back when there were no fees and there were grants. They both ended up in professional jobs, and ultimately very comfortable. It was absolutely education that saw them go from poor working class to comfortable middle class. If you look on the world scale, one of the things that makes the biggest difference is educating the girls who will be mothers.

@MojitosAllRound like your thinking! So is it like a person can lose weight via mounjaro. But if they go back to how they used to eat, the weight goes on
So mounjaro fixes the issues temporarily, but not long term

Families are much more likely to be in poverty if they are single parents, if they have children under 5, if they are disabled or care for a disabled child, if they have 3+ children or if they are BAME.

So reliable family support projects (not funded for 2/3 years then pulled), quality accessible pre-school childcare, appropriate supports for people with caring responsibilities including decent childcare for children with complex needs, and action to tackle systemic, structural racism would all help pull people out of poverty.

@TattiePants giving you a huge high five for working in that industry

Mostly hard agree tbh, money and stability - decent council accommodation, an easily accessible NHS, I think those are the most important things to eradicate poverty for the most part

Social problems like drug use etc will always be there, but facilities to manage these people go a long way to make life easier for those around them. Money is also needed for that.

@WildHazelCritic , don’t be daft. It wouldn’t matter how much money you gave some people they would just chunk through it and be poor again before you knew it. The only way to bring some people up is to educate and train them and to teach them about responsibility and investing.

Exactly this. Education opens doors and gives choices that are closed to less educated people.
Throwing money at people who are not willing to put any effort into changing their own lives or the lives of their children by making education a priority is a complete waste and does not change their mentality and attitude. Education does.

It depends on why one is in poverty.

I grew up in poverty. My mum didn’t work, my step dad was a useless lazy tradesman. We could absolutely have had more money if they both worked.

I was utterly determined it wasn’t going to be that for me.

However people working for disgustingly low wages and housing being so unaffordable then yes, more money is the key.

Current poverty can be overcome by money, the poverty cycle needs far more than just money. It’s the proverb of give a man a fish he eats for a day teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime.

increasing benefits or a one of cash injection will have limited impact without being taught how to budget, manage debts and being given the skills to increase your earning power