Javier Jaén's illustration depicting the feeling of being overwhelmed and short on time, symbolizing time poverty.
Credit: Javier Jaén
It’s ironic, isn’t it? Asking for more time to write about the very thing that disappears when you’re struggling financially: time itself. This isn’t just about deadlines for articles; it’s about the pervasive issue of time poverty, and how it intertwines with financial hardship. For someone with a stable income, a time crunch is a temporary annoyance. But for those constantly facing “no money, no money” situations, lacking time becomes another heavy weight in an already burdened existence, creating a vicious cycle.
Think about needing an extension on a deadline. For someone financially secure, it’s a granted reprieve, a chance to catch up. But even with that extra time, the backlog of neglected tasks grows – unanswered emails, pending errands, bills piling up. That promised light at the end of the tunnel? It seems to keep moving further away. This experience mirrors the relentless pressure faced by individuals living with financial scarcity. It’s a time-based equivalent of a predatory loan, where time is borrowed at an exorbitant interest rate. Focusing on one urgent matter means neglecting everything else, compounding stress and making future stability even more elusive. It’s a daily reality for those who constantly experience “no money, no money” – immediate needs overshadowing future planning, making escape feel impossible.
When we discuss poverty, the focus is often narrowly on finances: income levels, poverty lines. But this financial lens alone misses a crucial aspect. According to Sendhil Mullainathan, a Harvard economist and co-author of “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much,” the problem isn’t just a lack of funds. “The biggest mistake we make about scarcity,” he explains, “is we view it as a physical phenomenon. It’s not.” He identifies “no money, no money” as just one facet of a larger issue.
Mullainathan outlines “three types of poverty”: financial poverty, time poverty, and bandwidth poverty. Financial poverty is the obvious lack of money. Time poverty is the accumulating “time debt” as described earlier. Bandwidth poverty, however, is the often-overlooked scarcity of attention and cognitive resources, fueled by the other two. When you’re constantly worried about “no money, no money” and juggling immediate deadlines, your mental capacity to handle everyday tasks or future planning diminishes significantly. The stress of “no money, no money” today consumes your mental energy, leaving little for tomorrow. Decisions made under this kind of pressure are often reactive and short-sighted, perpetuating a cycle of hardship.
Eldar Shafir, a Princeton psychologist and Mullainathan’s co-author, emphasizes this scarcity juggling. “When people are juggling time, they are doing something very similar to when they’re juggling finances. It is all scarcity juggling. You borrow from tomorrow, and tomorrow you have less time than you have today, and tomorrow becomes more costly. It’s a very costly loan.” Shafir initially believed that people in poverty made the same judgmental errors as everyone else, but with more severe consequences. He discovered he was wrong. The errors themselves were different, often worse, stemming from a narrowed focus caused by scarcity. When constantly facing “no money, no money,” attention becomes fixated on immediate survival, leaving less mental space for anything else.
In a revealing 2012 study, Shafir, Mullainathan, and Anuj Shah explored how different types of scarcity impact decision-making and wealth accumulation. Participants were randomly assigned to “poor” or “rich” conditions, differing in available resources like time or turns in games. They played games like “Wheel of Fortune” and “Angry Blueberries.” In “Wheel of Fortune,” “poor” players with fewer guesses became overly focused on each guess, leading to cognitive exhaustion and worse overall performance. The anxiety of “no money, no money” – or in this case, no guesses – hindered their strategic thinking.
However, in “Angry Blueberries,” a different pattern emerged. “Poor” players, with fewer shots, were more deliberate, taking more time to aim. This increased focus led to higher points per shot. Was scarcity, like “no money, no money,” actually beneficial here? Not exactly. It wasn’t that scarcity inherently improved performance, but rather that abundance often leads to inefficiency.
We often assume pressure enhances efficiency. Deadlines make us work faster; limited budgets force us to be frugal. But the reality is more nuanced. While some pressure can be beneficial, chronic scarcity, like perpetually having “no money, no money,” creates a different dynamic.
Shafir uses the analogy of packing a suitcase. A small suitcase forces efficient packing, while a large one allows for carelessness. Similarly, in the “Angry Blueberries” game, the “rich” players with abundant shots became less efficient, while the “poor” players, constrained by scarcity, were forced to be more focused. It’s not that “no money, no money” makes you better, but that abundance can make you worse in certain situations.
However, this efficiency under scarcity breaks down when dealing with complex decisions. Consider applying for a loan. Someone with financial stability, not facing “no money, no money,” can compare offers, consider interest rates, and weigh pros and cons. But someone under constant financial strain, in a perpetual state of “no money, no money,” lacks the time and mental bandwidth for careful consideration. They are more likely to accept the first offer, even if it’s unfavorable, like a high-interest payday loan. Reflection and informed decision-making become luxury goods when you are constantly in survival mode, facing “no money, no money.”
When someone financially secure asks for an extension, they have options and breathing room. A late paycheck or a canceled assignment is manageable. But for someone constantly stressed by “no money, no money,” even simple solutions become inaccessible. The mental tax of scarcity, the constant juggling act, erodes the capacity for strategic thinking and long-term planning.
Efficiency under constant pressure is unsustainable. Attention is finite. While short-term pressure can sharpen focus, prolonged scarcity, the relentless reality of “no money, no money,” depletes cognitive resources. In a variation of the “Angry Blueberries” game where players could borrow shots from future rounds, “poor” players borrowed excessively and performed worse overall. Desperate for immediate relief from the scarcity, the “No Money No Money” mindset led them to make choices that were detrimental in the long run. They became immediately “richer” in shots but ultimately “poorer” in score.
“Abundant time can make us procrastinate. Deadline pressure makes us more efficient,” Shafir notes. “What scarcity does is make you focus. When there’s no scarcity, you relax, you take it easy, and then you wonder, what happened to the day? You’re treating time the way the rich treat money.” But the constant focus demanded by “no money, no money” is not a productive focus; it’s a draining one.
Further studies using “Family Feud” games, where time was the scarce resource, reinforced this. “Poor” players, with limited time per round, borrowed time excessively, regardless of interest rates, and performed worse. They prioritized immediate gains at the expense of future time, trapped in a scarcity mindset driven by the feeling of “no money no money” translating to “no time no time”. They even missed opportunities to strategize, failing to utilize previews of upcoming questions, so fixated were they on the immediate pressure. “Scarcity, of any kind, will create a tendency to borrow,” the researchers concluded, highlighting how the “no money no money” feeling can extend beyond finances into other resource management.
Just as financially poor individuals borrow money at high rates, often their only option driven by “no money no money,” they also borrow time. This “time borrowing” is a hidden aspect of poverty, often missed in traditional analyses. Even the limited time available is consumed by what Mullainathan calls the “bandwidth tax.”
Consider sugarcane farmers between harvests. Outwardly, they may seem to have ample free time when experiencing “no money no money.” But as Mullainathan explains, “Those farmers sitting on the stoop aren’t doing nothing. They’re churning.” They are constantly preoccupied with their obligations, intensely worrying about how to make ends meet with “no money no money.” This mental churning itself consumes valuable time and energy.
The inequity of the bandwidth tax is stark. For someone with financial security, occasional inefficiency is inconsequential. Missing a deadline or two is not catastrophic. But for those constantly battling “no money no money,” the lack of time has a compounding, devastating effect. The bandwidth tax isn’t just slightly higher; it’s exponentially greater, and there are fewer resources to mitigate the damage.
“When you get overloaded and you feel this deadline is overwhelming, you can say, I’ll take a vacation, I’ll focus on work-life balance,” Mullainathan points out. “Poor people can’t say, ‘I’ll take a vacation from being poor.’ It’s the same mental process, but a different feedback loop.” The poor are under a relentless, never-ending deadline of “no money no money,” a pressure that offers no respite. In this state, even seemingly irrational choices like buying lottery tickets become appealing, offering a glimmer of hope in a landscape of scarcity. The mental bandwidth taxed by “no money no money” leaves little capacity to calculate odds or consider alternative uses for limited funds.
Mullainathan argues that this bandwidth tax is so profound that it obscures the problem itself. Those trapped in “no money no money” cycles are so cognitively burdened that they may not even recognize the full extent of their predicament.
Javier Jaén's illustration depicting the feeling of being overwhelmed and short on time, symbolizing time poverty.
Credit: Javier Jaén
The availability of money directly influences the availability of time. As Shafir states, “If you keep busyness constant, the rich have it much easier. You can buy nannies and drivers and lawyers and the like. It’s easy to give yourself time if you have money.” Money, in essence, buys time and reduces cognitive load, a luxury unavailable when facing “no money no money.”
If poverty encompasses time and mental bandwidth alongside finances, our approach to combating it must evolve. Mullainathan suggests, “When we think about programs for the poor, we don’t ever think, hey, let’s give them programs that don’t use a lot of bandwidth.” We often blame individuals for not accessing available resources, failing to consider the cognitive burden required to navigate complex systems, especially when dealing with “no money no money.”
Shafir uses the example of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). “Take something like the Fafsa… Why is pickup for the low-income families less than 30 percent? People are already overwhelmed, and you go and give them an incredibly complicated form.” The cognitive complexity of bureaucratic processes acts as a significant barrier, particularly for those already struggling with “no money no money” and its associated bandwidth tax.
Shafir advocates for a radical shift in perspective: “Just like you wouldn’t charge them $1,000 to fill out a form, you shouldn’t charge them $1,000 in cognitive complexity.” Studies show that providing assistance with FAFSA completion significantly increases application rates.
Another promising approach involves creating immediate, low-bandwidth pathways to saving. Shafir describes a pilot program in India using “impulse savings cards,” allowing individuals to save small amounts easily. While small-scale, the initial results are encouraging. These interventions acknowledge the cognitive constraints imposed by “no money no money” and aim to simplify positive financial behaviors.
Ultimately, Mullainathan calls for a fundamental reimagining of poverty. Instead of viewing it as a fixed condition, we should recognize its malleability and the powerful impact of environment on the brain. “In neuroscience, they understand plasticity,” he states, “that the brain changes in response to the external environment. But the poverty field is stuck in 40 years ago… Even if you’re poor, you have a brain with all the majesty of any human brain. It’s just subject to different pressures.” Addressing poverty effectively requires acknowledging and mitigating these pressures, particularly the bandwidth tax and time scarcity that amplify the challenges of “no money no money.”
Maria Konnikova is a contributing writer for The New Yorker online and the author of “Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes.”
