Perhaps someone here could tell me why we need this type of research? I would have thought it was pretty logical that people living in poverty would have a narrow focus on short term financial decisions. If you're hungry, homeless, destitute etc, those are immediate needs that have to be addressed. A person living the reality of poverty, will try to survive first, before considering long term well being. This is a case, where that most descriptive of terms, "Well Derr", applies.

What does this sort of research add to what is already known about how being poor effects a person?

This is not even a particularly realistic study. Looking at decision making in a totally artificial environment. Where "poor" and "rich" are abstract concepts, or indeed a "game", is useless in any other sense apart from some academic exercise..

Is this the type of study used in government policy making? I sure hope not.

Perhaps we could see some research on the hopelessness and despair that comes from continuing poverty, and how, in a country as rich as Australia, that this is acceptable. Maybe some research on how pushing people into abject poverty, because they become unemployed, ill, old or disabled, leads to a downward spiral, a poverty trap, and maybe a few more suggestions, (like Eva Cox has made), that look at real ways of dealing with this problem.

This is the real world of poverty, my friend, a 56 year old man, lost his job. It wasn't a well paying job, but he was able to at least look after his needs, such as a roof over his head, food, bills, running a car, and the odd small luxury.

He is now on Newstart, he had to leave his house because he couldn't afford the rent. He lives in a caravan in a caravan park because share accommodation was not an option for a man of his age, (young people don't want to share a house with a 56 year old unemployed man). He sold his car because he could no longer afford petrol, or registration payments, let alone insurance, the money from this sale paid out the credit card debt he had.

After paying for his rent and utilities, he is left with about $30 a week for food, (he doesn't even think about going to a doctor, and the dentist is simply a dream). He cannot afford a haircut, or any new clothes. He cannot afford to have a phone, or internet account, so he is limited in the ways in which he can look for work.

He does everything required of him by centrelink, and his job network provider, but still has not managed to gain employment. Age discrimination is a big factor in this, but one that is ignored by government agencies.

This has been going on for 18 months now. He has become completely despondent, and feels as if his situation is hopeless.

He spent his entire food budget on a cask of wine and a lotto ticket, really poor decision, but when I asked him why, he said that at least he will feel good for a day, and you never know, his luck might finally change and he'll win a million. He doesn't care any more, he has no hope, and he knows that those in power do not care about him. He knows that society looks at him as a good for nothing bludger, and he has internalised this and now sees himself in the same way.

My friends case is a far better study of why people in poverty make poor decisions, and focus on the present, rather than the long term, than the study in this article.

Government is needed to provide the services and infrastructure to meet a broad range of needs of a modern complex society and modern complex economy. The - ahem - "market" system on its own does not do that. It is own interested in self interest and as we have often seen short-term self interest. Industry has no concept of equity, or the need to meet the needs of the whole of the community it operates in. In fact the market system/industry has no real concept of nation or community. It will simply shift its business and money to any nation, any economy where it gains the greatest opportunity and return.

Many socially desirable goods and services are more well and much more cheaply provided collectively by government:
= Child care, education and rent are among the three fastest growing areas of household spending since 1990, due to cutbacks in public expenditures.
= privatisation of the pension (superannuation) transferred the risk and cost from business and government to individuals.
= National Rental Affordability Scheme is philosophically if not literally the privatisation of public rental housing.
= Private health costs are rising in tandem with the policy of forcing people into it by starving the public health system.
= income has been massively skewed in favour of profits rather than wages in the last few decades – one of the reasons for the financial overstretching discussed in the last two paragraphs.

Poverty does not stimulate better choices - it stimulates worse ones.