The Poverty Simulation Experience
by Jessica L. Faulk
My family started the month with no money. As we looked at our upcoming bills, we considered pawning our jewelry and the couch. We needed food and medications, not to mention electricity. My father-in-law said he could take his Social Security check to pay the loan on the car, and I felt a sense of relief at the help he provided. As the new week approached, I knew that if I couldn’t pay the mortgage by the third week of the month, we would be homeless. After my daughter left for school and my husband went to work, I headed out to get groceries. In the back of my mind was a growing sense of dread. There just wouldn’t be enough money for everything.
On October 17, 2019, all social work students at Winthrop University were invited to attend a poverty simulation. No details had been provided about what the simulation entailed. As we arrived, students were issued a card with a last name on it. When we entered the gymnasium where the event was organized, we found a room of folding chairs grouped around the center of the space. Along the walls were tables behind which professors sat, and the tables had signs on them to indicate their function. One table was a bank; another was a grocery store; another represented a school. Other tables were for paying rent and electricity, and still others represented community resources.
With our cards representing our assigned last names for the simulation, we found the folding chairs with that last name taped to them. The last name represented our family, and people were grouped in variously-sized families around the room. A packet of information waited at the “home” for each family. We handed out our roles for the simulation, and we looked at our resources. The event organizer gave everyone a few minutes to familiarize ourselves with the materials in our packets while she went over the details of how the simulation would work. We were to experience what a month of poverty looked like, and after she blew the whistle, the first of four weeks would begin. Our goals were to pay our bills and survive with difficult encumbrances.
After the month began, families wrestled with the resources at hand as they waited for income to arrive from jobs and Social Security. Many essentials had to wait for lack of funds. Long lines at the bank hindered the ability to cash checks, and constraints with food benefits prevented some from buying as many groceries as they wanted for their families. The pawn shop denied some from pawning their goods, and budgets were slashed for lack of funds. We only had so many transportation passes, and we could only get to so many places in a given week. It became a struggle to prioritize bills, and frustrations mounted.
As we all moved through the four weeks of the simulation, professors darted among the families, issuing them cards which had setbacks, immediate necessary expenses, and other circumstance changes. One family adopted two additional children, despite limited means. A child brought home a note indicating she needed money for school supplies. Around the room, the students in the simulation began to exercise creativity, as well as behavior borne of desperation. Homes were broken into and the resources there stolen. Others tried to sell their transportation passes to others who scurried past on their own errands, and another student found a paycheck belonging to someone else and tried to cash it. The majority of families were unable to pay their mortgages, and they became homeless.
Despite the grim setting for the poverty simulation, students and professors were able to laugh as they acted their parts, and some individuals expanded on the experience by role-playing as their assigned family members. A male student grinned as he rocked the two dolls that represented his children, and the mortgage lender fanned herself with all the money she had collected. Still, there was a powerful lesson at the heart of it all. The weekly drain on limited resources was demoralizing, and family relationships were limited as everyone did their part to keep the unit afloat. Purchasing groceries and clothing took a back seat to the more looming priorities, and escaping from homelessness became an overarching ambition.
Although it can hardly capture the real experience of living in poverty, the poverty simulation is an eye-opening experience. We laughed at the “home” break-ins and the thefts at the time of the simulation, but that reality stayed with me after the simulation was concluded. In our classes, we learn about how low-income areas have higher crime rates, family violence, malnutrition, and lack of education. How can people escape from systematic hardship when all of their daily resources are bent on survival? It shouldn’t be surprising that desperate circumstances breed desperate circumstances. At the end of the simulation, the event organizer walked around the room with a doll cradled in her arms. It represented a child she had found among the folding chairs. That child had been left at home without supervision because the parents were so busy making ends meet.
As social workers, we are tasked to help oppressed populations escape from circumstances from which escape may seem impossible to the population we serve. As practitioners, we will navigate the cognitive hurdles that develop in such trying environments, and we will help people reshape their literal and psychological opportunities. The poverty simulation is not a game. It is an enriching experience that imparts a number of lessons, and no two students will come away with the same experience. For anyone trying to enter a helping profession, or for anyone already in one, the poverty simulation may allow you to gain a better understanding of the clients you will serve.
Jessica L. Faulk is an MSW student at Winthrop University with a BA in psychology from Arizona State University. She intends to earn her LCSW and practice psychotherapy.