Poverty is Not Caused by Laziness
The stigma that ‘the poor remain poor because they are lazy’ remains quite strong in public discourse, often influencing policy formulation and academic conversation. At first glance, this view seems logical as it offers a simple explanation, but it is actually misleading. In reality, millions of impoverished people work hard every day but remain trapped in poverty because the opportunities to improve their standard of living are never truly equal.
Hard work alone is not enough. Consider the lives of small-scale farmers, daily labourers, traditional fishermen, street vendors, or informal workers. Their working days often begin before sunrise and end long after most people have rested. They work longer hours than many formal sector employees, yet this hard work does not necessarily change their circumstances. What they face is not merely a lack of will, but limited opportunities and narrow choices.
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo confirmed this through field research in several countries, including Indonesia, summarised in ‘Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty’ (2011; revised edition 2025). They found that poor families live in situations that leave almost no room for error. Decisions that appear simple to the wealthy can become ‘life and death matters’ for the poor. Using savings to buy fertiliser means risking the inability to afford medical treatment; sending a child to school means reducing the family’s immediate consumption. These choices do not arise from laziness, but from the scarcity of resources.
As a result of living under such constraints, the poor often make short-term oriented decisions. They choose the certainty of today over benefits that may not materialise tomorrow. From the outside, these choices may seem irrational, but in conditions of extreme uncertainty, they are actually the most sensible decisions.
Poverty is not merely a lack of income. This view aligns with Amartya Sen’s ideas in ‘Development as Freedom’ (1999). He reminds us that poverty is not just low income, but ‘capability deprivation’—the inability of an individual to lead a life they value. While income is important, it is not the sole determinant of well-being. Low education, poor health, limited access to productive employment, and insufficient social protection all narrow a person’s life choices. Thus, the issue is not why the poor do not work hard, but why they lack equal opportunities to improve their lives.
Unfortunately, this shift in perspective has not fully occurred in public discourse or policy formulation. Poverty is still frequently discussed in moral terms: lazy or hardworking, frugal or wasteful, persistent or quick to give up. Such language is easy to understand but poor in explanation. It fails to answer why those who work hard remain poor, or why poverty is often inherited from one generation to the next.
When the victim is blamed, the root cause remains untouched. Paulo Freire, in ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ (1970), explained that oppressed societies are often convinced that the cause of their suffering lies within themselves. When this belief is accepted as truth, attention to the social structures that create deprivation vanishes. This symptom is still palpable in our discourse today. Instead of questioning the quality of education, access to healthcare, employment opportunities, or asset distribution, we are preoccupied with debating the character and behaviour of the poor. Poverty is viewed as an individual problem rather than a social and structural one. Yet, various studies show that poor families generally face multiple simultaneous constraints—ranging from education and health to economic opportunity—which reinforce each other and create a vicious cycle of poverty that is difficult to break.
How we understand poverty will ultimately determine how we address it. If poverty is understood as a limitation of capabilities and opportunities, then efforts to alleviate it must expand those capabilities and opportunities simultaneously.
Expanding opportunities and strengthening capabilities. This perspective underpins the ‘Graduation Approach’, a poverty alleviation method developed by BRAC—one of the world’s largest NGOs—in Bangladesh over two decades ago. Since then, this approach has been applied in various countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with adjustments for local contexts. The approach is not intended to replace social protection programmes, but to strengthen them through a series of integrated, sequential, adaptive, and time-bound multidimensional interventions, typically lasting 24–36 months.
Social protection serves as the foundation, ensuring the basic needs of families are met while maintaining their resilience against shocks. Building on this foundation, participants receive support in the form of productive assets—either cash or goods—complemented by skills training and intensive coaching. This combination of interventions is designed to enable participants to build productive and sustainable livelihoods.