Voluntary Poverty

THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL definition of voluntary poverty. Poverty is often seen as a social problem. As a social problem it is considered an undesirable condition. It is assumed that no one wants to live in poverty. Poverty is forced on people. It is involuntary. The poor are victims of structural, social, and cultural conditions beyond their power to change.

An example of a structural condition that creates poverty is unemployment. When factories lay off workers, and the educated and the skilled do not have jobs, people become poor because they are unable to meet their needs. Even when there are plenty of jobs available, a few may remain poor because they do not want to work. When this happens, poverty is seen as resulting from personality flaws. Cultural anthropologists have argued that poverty, like culture, can be transmitted from one generation to the next. Not only is poverty transferable from generation to generation, there is also the Matthew effect—the poor get poorer.

At the social level, strict definitions of poverty are needed when poverty is to be remedied through charity or public assistance programs. These definitions enable policymakers, welfare organizations, and others to help those considered poor to overcome poverty. Most welfare programs have elaborate methods of means testing to determine if an individual is poor or not.

When poverty is voluntarily practiced, individual-level definitions apply. In particular, when individuals who practice voluntary poverty live together in a community, they develop their own norms with respect to the consumption of various material goods and services. These norms are often shaped by the concept of simplicity. Voluntary simplicity involves the notion that in order to improve quality of life, one needs to shift from a consumption-oriented lifestyle toward a simple lifestyle. This lifestyle often involves working the land for subsistence in an ecologically friendly manner.

At times, groups and communities who have led a life of voluntary simplicity have had to face barriers and restraints that limited their ability to practice voluntary simplicity. Occasionally, such restraints have been met with collective action against imposers of such restrictions. For example, during the early 19th century, when the livelihood of several skilled cloth finishers was threatened by the introduction of shearing frames in the cloth mills of Yorkshire, they attacked and destroyed the mills. Similar attacks became commonplace and developed into the well-known Luddism movement.

Voluntary simplicity is an essential component of voluntary poverty. It is possible to have a few luxuries even when people practice voluntary simplicity as a guiding principle in their lives. However, many groups may consider possession of small excesses over what is needed as undesirable. They may choose to move from simplicity to poverty. Thus, in many instances voluntary poverty is seen as an extreme form of voluntary simplicity.

The notion of voluntary poverty is contained in ancient religions such as Buddhism and Jainism. Even today, several communities, such as the Amish, Mennonites, and Quakers in North America, practice voluntary poverty. The members of the Catholic Worker Movement founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin at the start of the Great Depression strongly observed voluntary poverty as a lifestyle. Today, over 185 Catholic Worker communities in the United States remain committed to the practice of voluntary poverty.

...