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To be poor is believed by many who are, and most who are not, to be an unpleasant thing. If there is a difference of opinion here between the rich and the poor, it is in the depth of feeling on the subject, something on which practical experience will be thought to heighten sensitivity, although this is not wholly certain. There is a strong possibility that in many societies the poor react to their economic situation with less anxiety than do the rich. Two forms of poverty can be distinguished. There is that which afflicts the few or, in any case, the minority in some societies. And there is the poverty that afflicts all but the few in other societies. The causes of the first kind of poverty, that of the poor individual or family in the predominantly affluent community, have been much investigated and debated. What characteristics ― moral, genetic, familial, environmental, educational, racial, social, hygienic ― cause some persons to be excluded from the general well-being? This, the cause of minority poverty, remains a question of considerable importance. Study has yet to produce general agreement. There remains even a residue of thought which holds that those who so suffer were divinely intended for their fate or have been accorded the suffering that, from personal deficiency, they righteously deserve. But this is not the kind of poverty with which I am here concerned. My concern is with the causes of poverty in those communities, rural in practice, where almost all people are poor ― where, if there is wealth or affluence, it is the exceptional fortune of the few. The causes of the rural poverty, in contrast with minority poverty, have been much less investigated. Instead, to an astonishing degree, the causes are simply assumed. When explanations are sought, numerous and exceptionally confident answers are given. When examined, the answers have one feature in common: they are universally irrelevant.
They are subject to contradiction by practical experience or they confuse cause with consequence or, while they serve casual conversational purpose, no one wishes to risk them in serious scientific argument. Or they are selected not for their validity but for their convenience. The most common explanation of mass poverty that is offered at all levels of professional sophistication is that the community, usually the country, is "naturally poor." This has reference to the physical endowment: the soil is rocky, arid, or insufficient; there are few minerals, hydrocarbons (petrol, coal and natural gas), or other natural resources. When too many people struggle with their meager and recalcitrant environment, the result is inevitable: they divide a small return; all are poor. Were Japan a poor country, its poverty would be explained along the lines just given. It is a mountainous cluster of offshore islands with little good soil, few minerals, no oil, but many people. Japan's catastrophic natural endowment goes unmentioned only because it is rich. Of another country, were its people poor, the same would be said. (Partly adapted.)