“Poverty is the equivalent of pulling an all-nighter,” said Harvard economist Sandhil Mullainathan. “Picture yourself after an all-nighter. Being poor is like that every day.” This comes from a recent study published in the journal, Science, which indicates that poverty takes up so much mental power, there’s little left for anything else.

In the past, poverty has been blamed on the individual’s bad decisions, lack of motivation and personal issues. However, this study suggests its all got to do with the situation they’re in. Poverty leads to bad decisions, which leads to more poverty. They did a couple tests to prove this, one in a mall and one in a small farming village in India. Here’s how they went down.

In the mall, shoppers were asked mentally challenging questions to measure their IQ and impulse control. However, half of them were asked a “teaser” question in the beginning – what they would do if their car had broken down and needed $1,500 worth of repairs — designed to put a pressing financial concerns at the forefront of their thoughts.

In India, researchers tested the cognitive capacity and decision-making of farmers before the sugar cane harvest, when they were most strapped for cash, and afterwards, when they had fewer financial woes.

The results show that people wrestling with financial strain dropped as much as 13 points on the IQ scale, about as much as someone who’s been up for 24 hours. Mullainathan says,

While the poor may be experiencing a scarcity of money, at some level what they may really be experiencing is a scarcity of bandwidth, of cognitive capacity, it’s the situation that’s creating the stress

[Source : The Washington Post]