People have a set amount of mental bandwidth (also known as brainpower) to deal with everything life throws at them. When someone is living in scarcity, especially economic scarcity, a significant amount of their bandwidth is focused on just dealing with the scarcity and juggling competing needs. When this happens, bandwidth for other issues is limited and people can miss problems right in front of them or have difficulty thinking of the long term benefits of a choice.
Examples:
A woman is working two part-time jobs and raising her two children. She is paying the rent and putting food on the table each week, but she doesn’t have the bandwidth to remember other less urgent issues. So she misses taking a few birth control pills one month. A few weeks later she finds out she’s pregnant again.
A man is working part-time jobs and falls sick, so he misses work and doesn’t get his weekly paychecks. He takes out a payday loan with a high-interest rate even though he doesn’t know how he will pay it back, but right now he needs to pay his rent and eat.
