1 Background
The poverty trap is defined as a societal and economic condition in which people struggle to escape poverty and financial insecurity. Liberation from this maelstrom require tremendous effort and resources, and in in the absence of enablers creates destructive feedback loops in the system. These phenomena entrench inter-generational poverty cycles and stymy social mobility progression of large swathes of the population. Evidence exits globally that in the main, upward progression for decades remained stagnant and inequality, over the recent past, deteriorated in most of the world. This article will posit that policy measures to alleviate poverty, have failed at worst, and as a minimum extremely pedestrian to register the desired impact, some three decades into our democracy. It is argued that the self-reinforcing and negative psychosis of poverty needs to be understood and the phenomena of a growth mindset requires interrogation and furtherance in our education and society at large.
- Poverty in the South African context
Poverty in tandem with unemployment and inequality remain the Achilles heel, some would say the scourge, of South Africa. With regards to inequality, South Africa’s Gini coefficient, a measure of how income is distributed across the population, is estimated to be 0.63, amongst the worst globally. According to the Statistics South Africa, South Africa’s unemployment rate slipped further to 33.2% in Q2 of 2025, from 32.9% in Q1. The expanded definition of unemployment, which includes those discouraged from seeking work, eased marginally to 42.9% in Q2 from 43.1% in Q1. Progress towards improving labour absorption of new entrants remain highly unsatisfactory with unemployment rate among individuals aged 15 to 24 registering 63% in the second quarter of 2025. While unemployment among graduates is significantly lower, at 11.7% in 2025, this figure surged from 8.7% in the previous year, raising alarm bells about the mismatch between the outcomes from formal qualifications and modern-day and future relevant skills requirements.
It is therefore not surprising that poverty levels remain high with an estimated 40.0% of the population (or 25 million people) have a monthly consumption expenditure below R9,096 (the lower-bound poverty line). Poverty is skewed against the majority black population, stymying national imperatives to achieve social cohesion and attendant building blocks for nation building. Poverty further entrenches pre-democracy economic and social fault lines mitigating against establishment of positive national psyche. Apartheid ideology continues to define spatial segregation. Those that are lucky enough to find work, spend an inordinate amount of income and time on travel. The outcomes are devastating to the social fabric as evinced by spiralling deaths from crime exceeding that of war-torn regions, surging gender base violence and a hopelessness that permeates through society.
Sticky poverty persists despite extensive spending on social assistance and additional social support including spending on health, education, social protection, community development and employment programmes which protect the most vulnerable groups. In the 2023/24 fiscal year, there were 18.8 million social grant beneficiaries (about 35% of the population) with an annual cost to the fiscus of R217.1 billion. In addition, the government has extended the Social Relief of Distress Grant introduced during the COVID pandemic. Social grants, historically a much-touted area of government performance, saw satisfaction amongst recipients drop from a high of 77% around 2009/2010 to 59% in late 2021.
Poor outcomes like these frustrate attainment of the lofty National development Goals and attainment of a progressive growth trajectory. What remain largely unrecognised in policy debates is the debilitation of self-perpetuating psychological effects of poverty, which confounds the nurturing of a growth mindset amongst the population. The growing fatalism, amongst especially the marginalized, of the futility of hard work plays no small part in destructive feedback loops that sustain the prevailing negative psychosis.
- Negative feedback loops of poverty
Living in a state of poverty is demotivating, debilitating and disempowering, making it extremely difficult to escape from. It’s a persistent condition where lack of resources, insecurity, and social exclusion combine to erode an individual’s or community’s capacity and confidence to accept new challenges and thrive.
Family poverty, disproportionally and negatively so, affects achievements and academic attainments of children in such households. Not performing on a par with their middle-class peer group, increase the risk for academic failure and its concomitant behavioural problems for these children. Associated social factors such as single-parenthood, parents absent form home due to having to take jobs that erode family cohesion and guidance and ineffective child-rearing account for much of the remaining risk for psychosocial maladjustment. Childhood poverty inevitably emanates in a developmental course charted toward low academic attainment, poor health behaviours and attitudes, and adult depression and almost inevitably this legacy defines the outcomes for generations to come.
Another obstacle that keeps the poor from rising out of poverty is the tendency to make costly financial decisions and indulge in risky behaviour. This include gambling, taking out high interest loans, and failing to participate in social assistance programs. Prevailing research paradigms attributed poor decision-making of the poor to either to low-income individuals’ personalities, poor education or substandard living conditions. Research published in Science[1] paints a fresh perspective in that living with scarcity changes people’s psychology and even cognitive scores.
Investigating the hypothesis that the circumstances of poverty lead individuals to make bad decisions, researchers studied the cognitive functioning and the economic decisions of low-income people who just received a salary and low-income people who are just about to get paid. They found that low-income people who have just had a payday are cognitively better off than low-income people who are just about to have a payday. The expenditures and caloric intake of Food Stamp recipients in the US increase dramatically after Food Stamps receipt. A similar phenomenon has been documented for retirees after they receive their Social Security benefits. These findings are further supported by the harvest time effect, in which it was found that Indian seasonal farmworkers registering statistically significant positive changes in IQ immediately after harvesting[2]. These research outcomes do suggest that there is a psychology of poverty that must be factored in for impactful policy formulation.
- Fixed and Growth Mindsets
Our mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world and yourself. It influences how you think, feel, and behave in any given situation. It means that what you believe about yourself impacts your success or failure. Mindsets can influence how people behave in a wide range of situations in life. For example, as people encounter different situations, their mind triggers a specific mindset that then directly drives their response and behaviour.
According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, your beliefs play a pivotal role in what you want and whether you achieve it. Dweck postulates that a fixed mindset, spur a believe that your abilities are fixed traits and therefore can’t be changed. You might also believe that your talent and intelligence alone lead to success, and effort is not required. A growth mindset on the other hand, makes you believe your talents and abilities can be developed over time through effort and persistence, within the boundaries of realistic expectations.
A further enhancement of the growth mindset is the winning mindset which is shaped by strong self-belief, grit, resolution and an aptitude to shake off the disappointments you have faced in your life. A winning mindset refers to the flow achieved by champions achieved when the mind and body work in complete harmony to produce optimum performance and one that can propel you further than you ever thought possible[3]. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describe this and other immersive flow states as “optimal experiences,” offering a potential path to meaningful happiness. Such a sense of deep engagement and connection with ourselves and our environment can also be found or built into all aspects of our lives, from the workplace and education to our relationships. The five principles of developing a winning mindset are: Simplicity, Thinking, Emotional Intelligence, Practical, Storytelling (STEPS).
- How Poverty Impedes Growth Mindset
Whilst being the desire of any parent is to inculcate a growth mindset in their children, and even better a winning mindset, cognizance must be given to constraints emanating from a poverty or deprived household.
- Psychological Constraints
- Scarcity mindset: Constant stress about meeting basic needs (food, shelter, transport) consumes and erodes cognitive bandwidth, leaving little mental space for future-oriented thinking or self-improvement.
- Learned helplessness: The rise in fatalism, with about a quarter of South Africans believing it simply doesn’t matter what kind of government they have[4]. This disillusionment is deeply tied to perceptions of how democracy is functioning, particularly regarding service delivery in which 60% of our population believe that the situation has worsened. Repeated exposure to failure or systemic barriers creates a sense of futility — “no matter what I do, nothing changes.” Disillusionment caused interest in elections to wane, falling below the long-term average, particularly concerning among younger generations. More critically, belief in political efficacy – the sense that one’s vote makes a difference – has fundamentally changed, sitting in the low to mid-30% range. This pervasive atmosphere of helplessness disincentivises social mobility in this country, mitigating against a growth mindset.
- Identity threat: Living in poverty can become internalized, negatively affecting self-worth and expectations of success militated against by squalor (Satisfaction with the provision and services of electricity and water/sanitation declined sharply.) and grime thriving in South Africa due to poor service delivery and decay in public services.
- Social and Structural Constraints
· Limited access to opportunity: Evaluations of government performance show a significant and prolonged period where those dissatisfied with democracy exceed those satisfied. Economic dissatisfaction is particularly high, with over two-thirds discontented with the economy’s performance. Critically, evaluations of specific national hygiene metrics are sobering.
- 75% thought the corruption outlook had worsened.
- 73% felt the cost of living had worsened.
- 65% said crime and safety had worsened.
- Poor schools, unsafe environments, and lack of mentors reduce exposure to role models with growth-oriented behaviours. This is particularly evident in the South African education system where bullying, gender-based violence and racism and toxic discrimination against minorities are reported on daily.
- Cultural capital gaps: Social norms in impoverished contexts may value survival over long-term personal development. Countries that have fostered a positive mindset as integral to their developmental ideals effectively dealt with cultural barriers excluding women and minorities from the workplace and economic opportunity. Rural empowerment projects initiated by women in India posted sustainable social mobility and laid the foundation for thriving and bustling entrepreneurial ecosystem.
- Addressing the Psychology of Poverty to cultivate growth mindset
Policy makers must accept that simply supplying Aid will not eradicate poverty and neither would the drip down paradigm of capitalism. Active steps must be taken to additionally work on the psychology of poverty, particularly as it pertains to providing obstacle to the development of a growth mindset. Of course, this will require deeper debate and a multi-stakeholder dialogue. Several pointers can be gleaned from nations that have recognized this fact and have scored notable improvements.
- Stabilize the basics: Ensure food security, safety, and consistent access to education. Growth mindset thrives only when survival is not at stake. Proponents of the guaranteed Basic Income Grant would cite the highly impressive research results showing that improved mental health (other studies found improvement across other metrics) is achieved with the assurance of a basic income to poor families[5]. South African policymakers had been examining the feasibility and potential of a Basic Income Grant for decades.
- Contextualize mindset interventions: Explicitly promote growth mindset to attain personal agency to collective efficacy — “we can improve together,” not just “you can if you try.” Empowering education is critical which would then necessitate a critical diagnosis of the pedagogy to include psychology of, inter alia self-worth, that should shape our children, both at school and home.
- Model local success stories: Representation matters. Role models from similar backgrounds make “growth through effort” believable. The sense the euphoria and sense of national pride is palpable when our sporting heroes achieve on the world stage.
- Reinforce system fairness: Align public policy, education, and community programs so that effort reliably leads to opportunity. In South Africa, despite current poor prognosis, crippled by institutional discrimination based on race prior to 1994, proved that with the appropriate policy mix and creation of avenues for unlocking potentials, have demonstrated individuals with a particular (growth) mindset can ascend, as limited in its outcomes as it may be, to the highest strata of society. Of late, minority political parties explicitly attack Black Economic Empowerment policies of Government claiming that they have become self-servicing, encouraging corruption and counter effective to the ambitions of minorities.
- Empowering educational outcomes: This is especially of concern in South Africa when one considers the surge towards privatization of schools and universities to accommodate the upper strata, suggesting increasing polarization mitigating against the ideal of inclusiveness and equality. The basis for a positive mindset is laid in primary education and the establishment of self-worth is fostered at an early age.
- Concluding Remarks
Debilitating poverty erodes the psychological, social, and material foundations needed for a growth mindset to flourish. Sustainable empowerment comes from integrating growth mindset development with poverty alleviation, education reform, and equitable access to opportunity. A growth mindset will not only build national pride and a positive psyche but would unlock innovation, economic growth and the flywheel effect of success espoused in his book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins.
Addendum
This neatly translates into the acronym STEPS, Simplicity – When trying to convey ideas, particularly in high impact situations, like a coach giving a pep talk during a time out, use simple easy concepts that go straight to the heart of what is needed at that time. Sound bites not necessary, but brevity is often key.
- Thinking – For a culture of a winning mentality to endure we must generate interest and curiosity. Hughes explains that this can be achieved via laying tripwires ‘ or opening gaps in their knowledge’, generating curiosity and then leading people to fill in the gap via their own learning.
- Emotions – How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. Research shows people are more likely to donate to a charitable donation to a single individual than an organisation. We are wired to feel things for people not abstractions.
- Practical – How do we make our ideas clear? We must explain them in terms of human actions in terms of sensory information. This is why so many business communications go awry.
- Stories – How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Coaches naturally swap stories after every coaching session and by doing so they multiply their experience.
The perennial chronic failure in service delivery in South Africa stems from a complex interplay of issues, including poor governance, rampant corruption, the deployment of politically connected individuals, underqualified professionals, a pervasive lack of accountability, and budget mismanagement. These systemic problems cripple the capacity to deliver services effectively, leading to inadequate infrastructure maintenance and bureaucratic hurdles that delay necessary interventions. Furthermore, political priorities often overshadow genuine public needs, which continue to fuel community distrust and protest action.
South Africa is grappling with a profound crisis of public confidence, a situation inextricably linked to the government’s persistent challenges in delivering essential services. Data spanning nearly two decades reveals a public increasingly disillusioned with the state’s performance, a sentiment that directly undermines democratic legitimacy and potentially alters political behaviour.
[1] Does Poverty Make You Behave Differently? | Chicago Booth Review Podcast
[2] Phrase refers to a 2013 study involving Indian sugarcane farmers, which found that the same farmers scored an average of 13 points lower on IQ tests before the harvest (when they were experiencing financial stress and “scarcity mindset”) compared to after the harvest when they were more financially secure and relaxed.
[3] Damian Hughes “What Sport can Teach us about Great Leadership: The Five Steps to a Winning Mindset.”
[4] Citizen Discontent Reflects South Africa’s Service Delivery Crisis – Geoscope
[5] Naomi Wilson, Shari McDaid, “The mental health effects of a Universal Basic Income: A synthesis of the evidence from previous pilots”, Social Science & Medicine, Volume 287,2021
