The argument that poverty is not just a lack of money but a social status and material condition that is actively produced and maintained by systems. Laws, economic policies, discriminatory practices, and spatial planning (like redlining) construct barriers that prevent groups of people from accessing wealth, trapping them in a condition defined as "poor." Poverty is less an individual failing and more the outcome of a societal blueprint that allocates deprivation.
*Example: "Her neighborhood had no grocery store, bad schools, and predatory lenders—all while being a 10-minute drive from a booming business district. The Theory of Constructed Poverty explains this: it's not an accident. Decades of zoning, disinvestment, and policing policies literally constructed that landscape of need. The poverty was built into the infrastructure, brick by bureaucratic brick."*
by Abzu Land January 31, 2026
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