If you’re not dirt poor, with few prospects for changing your situation, it’s hard to consider how much of your thought would be devoted to grim subjects. Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir illustrated the concept and the myth of the so-called cycle of poverty in their recent book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Being stuck in perpetual crisis mode is less about wasting your food stamps buying lobster, the authors say, and more about what they call lack of bandwidth.
It works like this. When you’re laying in bed all night wondering how you’re going to pay your child’s daycare provider if you put tires on the car, but if you don’t get tires it’s just a matter of time before you have a flat and can’t get to work and then you’ll lose hours of pay and possibly your whole job…let’s just say you don’t have a lot of energy left for healthy meal planning, shopping, and preparation. The authors call this a “bandwidth tax” on the poor that America’s better off just don’t have to pay.
Now Google, courtesy of The New York Times’ David Leonhardt, is giving a stark glimpse into the mindsets of those on the losing end of income inequality. The search terms of poor people show that they and the well-off live in different countries, and possibly on different planets.
In the hardest places to live – which include large areas of Kentucky, Arkansas, Maine, New Mexico and Oregon – health problems, weight-loss diets, guns, video games and religion are all common search topics. The dark side of religion is of special interest: Antichrist has the second-highest correlation with the hardest places, and searches containing “hell” and “rapture” also make the top 10.
What do people who live in the best-off areas — Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming and the large metropolitan areas of the Northeast and West Coast — search for? It boils down to ways to document and enhance their privileged existence.
In the easiest places to live, the Canon Elph and other digital cameras dominate the top of the correlation list…Baby Joggers, Baby Bjorns and baby massage; Skype and Apple devices like the iPod Nano; a piece of workout equipment known as a foam roller; and various foreign destinations (Machu Picchu, New Zealand, Switzerland and Pyeongchang, the South Korean host city for the 2018 Winter Olympics).
Even sweets spotlight the divide. In poor areas, people search for “baby shower cake ideas.” In rich ones, they want to identify, and presumably purchase, the “best cupcake” in their area.
The internet is at least a resource for those tossing in their beds, and a way to look for help with income and medical needs.
Income has stagnated in working-class communities, which helps explain why “selling avon” and “social security checks” correlate with the hardest places from our index. Inequality in health and life expectancy has grown over the same time. And searches on diabetes, lupus, blood pressure, 1,500-calorie diets and “ssi disability” – a reference to the federal benefits program for workers with health problems – also make the list.
Whether trying to sell cologne and makeup to others with no money can lift poor people out of desperation, it’s at least something to think about, and reason for a glimmer of hope. Judging by this research, if you could think your way out of poverty, a lot of people out there would be much better off — and then their main concern, too, would be taking the best pictures of their fortunate offspring.
