Irrespective of the number of years of marriage, widows often found themselves thrown out of households and destitute overnight. So I came to town and slept on the pavement. In Latin America, indigenous groups and those of African descent spoke about discrimination, whether in trying to get loans or buying food in the local markets or in their interactions with their children's schools. The defining experiences of poor people involve highly limited choices and an inability to make themselves heard or to influence or control what happens to them. By and large, poor people say that insecurity of life has increased and they have not been able to take advantage of new opportunities because of corruption and a lack of connections, assets, finance, information, and skills.
Many poor people define poverty as the inability to exercise control over their lives.
Limited resources force poor people to think in terms of very short time horizons. The poor, in contrast, cannot fulfill their wishes or develop their capacities. Low self-confidence both results from poverty and increases powerlessness and isolation from opportunity. A group of young men in Bower Bank, Jamaica, rank low self-confidence as the second biggest impact of poverty. Not only are we not educated but we don't have a street-wise education.