I disagree with some of this. While a lack of effort can and will certainly lead to poverty ie, you quit your job for no reason and don't get another one, yes surely a lack of effort has lead to your poverty.
Now in situations where there is generation after generation of poverty in a family, this is what you have called a "difficult circumstance" and I disagree that the only way a difficult circumstance can affect poverty is a lack of effort. If a baby is reared from the age on 0-5 and not been read to, spoken to with proper English, has been told they are "bad" "no good" and made to feel like a burden to their parents/family, not taught table manners, social graces, and learned fear rather than respect. This child will not have been given the mental tools, sometimes physical tools meaning high sugar, fat, and carbohydrate diets, low in quality proteins and vitamins and whole grains that a child need for body and brain development. The child I am speaking of will enter the school system with no experience with numbers and letters, possibly physically and/or mentally deficient, low self esteem, low to no respect for self and adults, sometimes mentally ill, with no support at home even being totally unsupervised at home in front of the TV from the time they wake up until bed time.
As this young person tries and fails all through school, having never been able to form quality relationships with people that will be consistent and responsible in their lives, they drop out of school or barely make it through school never really gaining the skills necessary to hold down a full time job or do the kind of work it takes to get through college.
This isn't a racial thing, a inner city or rural thing, or a undocumented thing. It's not even the majority of poor people but it is the story of many Americans who never learned how to learn or grow in any meaningful way or expect anything better for themselves but poverty and misery. Not for lack of trying but lack of skill set from jump.
