An emerging literature on “the psychology of poverty” suggests that the experience of poverty itself has psychological consequences, some of which may make escaping poverty more difficult. We synthesize the evidence base from both psychology and economics using an organizing framework comprising four sets of mechanisms: cognitive function, mental health, beliefs, and preferences. We discuss the strength of the evidence supporting both how poverty affects these four mechanisms and how these four mechanisms in turn affect poverty. As our review shows, the existing evidence has clearly established proof of concept that psychological factors exist in the experience of and response to poverty. However, there is still a lack of evidence on whether these effects are meaningful in magnitude and lead to the perpetuation of poverty. We conclude by summarizing promising future directions for research that could help close these evidence gaps, with important implications for the design of poverty reduction policies.

中文翻译：

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贫困心理学：当前和未来的方向


一项关于“贫困心理学”的新兴文献表明，贫困的经历本身就会产生心理后果，其中一些可能会使摆脱贫困变得更加困难。我们使用一个由四组机制组成的组织框架综合了来自心理学和经济学的证据基础：认知功能、心理健康、信念和偏好。我们讨论了支持贫困如何影响这四种机制以及这四种机制如何反过来影响贫困的证据强度。正如我们的综述所表明的那样，现有证据已经清楚地证明了心理因素存在于贫困的经历和对贫困的反应中。然而，仍然缺乏证据表明这些影响是否具有重大意义并导致贫困永久化。最后，我们总结了有希望的未来研究方向，这些方向可能有助于缩小这些证据差距，对减贫政策的设计具有重要意义。