Book offers insights into poverty

By Tony Staley

	Lenten Reading

Anyone from the middle or upper class who knows someone living in generational poverty probably has been puzzled by some of their decisions.

For example, why do they have cable TV? Why is an unexpected cash windfall quickly spent and not saved?

Ruby Payne answers these and many other questions in her highly informative and easy-to-read "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" (aha! Process, Inc., Highlands, Texas. 199 pages. $22). Payne has revised the book four times, most recently in 2005, since it was published in 1996.

Payne not only helps the middle class and wealthy understand the lives of people in generational poverty, she offers a framework for change. First a definition: generational poverty lasts two or more generations, while situational poverty is shorter and is triggered by something, such as divorce, death or illness.

Payne, a speaker and business owner, began to rethink her ideas about poverty and wealth when she was the principal of an affluent elementary school in Illinois.

Besides learning how the wealthy thought, she met former neighbors of her husband, who had grown up in situational poverty. From them, she realized that money was not the biggest difference between generational poverty and the middle class.

The biggest differences are the unwritten rules and skills needed to survive in generational poverty, the middle class and wealth.

To survive in poverty one must know: which grocery stores garbage bins are accessible for thrown-away food; how to get someone out of jail; how to defend yourself in a fight; how to get a gun if you have a police record; how to live without electricity, a phone or a car; how to trade and barter; how to tell stories to entertain friends; how to move in a half-day.

Middle class rules include knowing: how to sign your children up for sports or music lessons; how to properly set a table; what stores sell the right brands of clothes; how to order in a nice restaurant; how to help your children with their homework or where to go for help; about credit cards, savings and checking accounts and insurance.

Rules for the wealthy include: knowing how to order off a menu in English, French and another language; having several favorite restaurants in several foreign countries; having at least two staffed and maintained residences; knowing how to ensure confidentiality and loyalty from your domestic staff; knowing how to enroll your children in the preferred private schools; supporting or buying the work of a particular artist.

Payne found common characteristics in generational poverty, including:

• The need for background noise, so TV is almost always on and more than one family member is often talking at the same time;
  
  
• Money is to be used - either shared with others in need, who also will share with you, or immediately spent; there will always be emergencies, so enjoy the moment.
  
  
• Individual personality is important, particularly the ability to entertain because it brings respite from the struggle to survive.
  
  
• The mother is the most powerful person if she is the caretaker.
  
  
• A job means survival, not a career.
  
  
• Men must be hard workers, lovers and fighters.
  
  
• A "good" woman takes care of and rescues her man and children.
  
  
• Punishment is about penance and forgiveness, not change (indeed, life goes on as usual after forgiveness).
  
  
• Destiny and fate, not choice, control life.
  
  
• Time means the present, which is spent reacting to what has/is happening, not considering the implications of actions.
  
  

"A Framework for Understanding Poverty" suggests ways schools can positively affect their students, making it an excellent resource for educators.

It also is recommended reading for parish social concerns groups, civic leaders, employers and "One Book One Community" programs.

As Payne puts it, "The role of the educator or social worker or employer is not to save the individual, but rather to offer a support system, role models and opportunities to learn, which will increase the likelihood of the person's success."

Not every poor person would choose to live differently, she says, because they enjoy "a freedom of verbal expression, an appreciation of individual personality, a heightened and intense emotional experience and a sensual, kinesthetic approach to life usually not found in the middle class or among the educated."

(Staley is a retired editor of The Compass.)