I strongly disagree with the idea that "the stress of being poor can take a lot on decision-making and cognitive skills". This is the typical kind of speculation from people who has never been poor and just imagine how it would be, based in their irrational fear to poverty. I got direct experience on that, lived during several years with a couple of dollars or less daily in neighborhoods qualified as "indigent". Now I live much better, own my home with lot of appliances and live much more stressed than before: the real stress comes not of lack of material things or appliances but by the fear to lose the many that you actually have. Poor people, even the extremely poor, live quite relaxed, malnutrition is not a big deal -well maybe in Sub Saharian areas where people die of hunger- but not in Latin America or most of the world. People can stay 3 or 4 days without eat and nothing happens, hunger don´t provoke suffering as the fear to hunger do. Middle and middle low class are the most stressed because they have lots of needs that poor people has not: I have to pay Internet, ligth, water, gas, etc. every month all those thing who was not an issue when I was poorer. If to live in poverty or indigence where so bad poor people would work harder and there would don´t exist bums, the poverty by choice is widespread because for many people is simply a good trade-off between effort and achievement. Most of ideas on poverty has been elaborated in the imagination of people who has never been actually poor, that is why they are so useless.