In my last blog post, I explained the way that I think ignorance causes inaction on poverty. In this post, I have come up with a series of questions that I think we can ask ourselves to help us relate to poverty and understand how much poverty actually threatens and affects those of us not currently living in poverty.

The Questions

How may your life have been different if you were born in a much poorer family? What if you went to a much poorer public school in a much poorer community, with much more crime, with much more wayward students and with much less funding?

What if pretty much all of your family and friends were poor throughout your life? Have you ever been bailed out by family or friends who had spare money or personal connections? What if you hadn’t been?

What if your household never had a car or other automobile for your entire childhood? What if you never had internet or a computer? How may that have changed your life?

Can you think of something that could have been different in your past through no fault of your own that would have caused you to fall into poverty? Even if you had worked just as hard and exercised just as good decision-making, what may have happened to you that could have led to you being poor (or poorer) now?

Can you imagine a future scenario in which you end up poor through no fault of your own? What kind of help would you expect to get or need to get to escape poverty? If you fell into poverty in the future while still working just as hard or harder, how would you feel if people called you lazy or stupid or said you deserved to be poor?

How have you been lucky in your life? How has that luck contributed to your comfort of life and financial situation? Are there ways you could have been much more unlucky that could have caused you to fall into poverty? What sort of unlucky things could happen to you now or in the future that could severely affect your finances and make you poor or poorer?

The Answers

Post your answers to those questions, read other people’s answers and comment on this blog post as a whole in this thread at our forums.

Pass a link to this post along to other people as well. If we all start thinking about poverty, we will be inspired to do something about it and hopefully finally work together and eradicate it.