Hy, Steven. Interesting question and very actual, I think. Yes, I believe it does, but not necessarily in a negative sense. Some examples that come into my mind of poor but very creative artists are Van Gogh, Modigliani, Utrillo. Of course, you might say that for some of them poverty was a result of their personality and mental condition, factors which could also influence their creativity. So, believing that in their case poverty and creativity go together might be just fallacious thinking, the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which could be briefly explained as „with this, therefore because of this”. But I strongly believe that a mentally healthy, intelligent person could enhance his/hers creative abilities - as a means of survival - in an hostile environment of which poverty could be one factor among others. What I do not believe is the fact that sudden occurring poverty in an educated person s life could bring an improvement of creativity before that person develops some sort of depression.

Hi Steven, Yes because it somehow limits your ideas, you cannot think too big materialistically. you have to creatively think of other ways which sometimes compromise your design work.

Steven:

I want to agree with both the above responses, but the creative idea begins with thinking about it and then the cost comes in bringing this creativity into reality in the form of an innovation. So, if you do not have the means to do the latter, it can be roadblock to fully realizing your creativity.

many thanks,

Debra

I was talking with a colleague yesterday who has been studying entrepreneurship and  US census data and found that students with the maximum government student loan debt are statistically more likely to start a new enterprise than those who have not maxed out their student loans - not sure if that's poverty, but ti's something... Also those with more debt may have advanced degrees (ie been in higher ed longer) .

Steven, I think that there is complex interaction between poverty and creativity. On one hand, children of talented and wealthy parents often do not develop similar talents. Just because they often get too much for free, and might become lazy to develop their talents. (In this case genetics and social environment of parents should support them.) At the same time, high poverty can be an obstacle for talent development. Children from poor families often have to start working early in their life. They also cannot afford expensive equipment for some sports or to pay classes in art and music. I have a hypothesis that moderate income goes better with talent development (comparing to both too high and too low).

Certainly yes. entitlement over resources is very important. few talented and creative people are able to overcome the constraints and improve their capabilities. however, this can not become a generalization. deprivations could kill the talent and creativity of many in the preocess.

Dear Steven,

I think I have two things to add to our colleagues' responses.

First, there is a concept in a renowned Brazilian geographer called Milton Santos, who wrote a lot of insightful stuff on globalization vs. locality, which could be translated as "the wealth of scarcity". This concept basically refers to the cultural ingenuity that sprouts from harsh living conditions (i.e. poverty), the fresh and diverse ways of life, eating, housing etc. that people manage to create, among other causes, because of the lingering restraints they live in. This "local cultural wealth" is often compared to the mass production-related influences of globalization in local ways of living. On the other side, he did not mean to praise a monastic way of life nor poverty as a means to spur creativity whatsoever. He just meant that there is ingenuity among the poor, despite all constraints, and also cultural traits that must be valued rather than deemed as "primitive", "ignorant" and alike.

Then to the second point: especially if we recall the links between poverty and hunger, malnutrition can indeed impact cognition and intellectual development of children during the "1,000 days window" (from pregancy to the child's 2nd birthday), which might affect their whole lifecycle. Many other constraints in capacities and opportunities caused by poverty surely also influence people's actual creative ability, not least because to be creative you also need resources of some kind, security etc., i.e. an enabling environment to be creative.

The bottomline is yes, poverty surely impacts creative ability, but very unlikely to the extent that people in poverty are less able to be creative because of poverty. They surely could be yet more creative if they were not in this situation, but mainly because creativity has to do with enabling environments and resources as much as, or possibly more than, individual ability in itself.

a thoughtful and insightful answer Daniel

My response is flavored by a combination of opinion and intuition rather than knowledge and research.  To me there is a trade-off of sorts. There are many creative people who suffer for their art.  We think nothing of referring to someone as a starving artist or musician.  Their art contributes to cultural wealth but often doesn't have obvious economic value (narrowly defined) so their artistic activities cannot support them..  The ability and desire to pursue one's art sometimes comes into conflict with the biological need to maintain ones body temperature using fuel (food), shelter, and clothing.  Once someone has to devote energy to meeting basic needs, less energy is available for creative activity.  I think this is where the role of patronage comes in.  Whether it be the King, Queen, Pope, government or rich benefactor, an artist with a patron will have the ability to pursue his or her passion without forgoing the basics of life.  For someone in poverty (sans patron) it seems that the competition between activities required to maintain life and creative activities would ultimately put the squeeze onartistic efforts.  

Hi Steven,

The creative's ability could not be developed if people face poverty. There are many children in isolated villages in Romania, living in very poor families and their access to education is also limited. I think creative's development of individuals is very correlated with its living condition. I checked if there are reliable statistical data on this subject. The EU-SILC (Survey on Income and Living Conditions) could help you. The questionnaires for all EU countries are at: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/income-and-living-conditions/quality/questionnaires

Dear Steven in straight way individual capacities are affected, poverty caused (Sen, A., 1986): education and culture adult case; but afect to much children learning, because food lack intake, should money scarcity, become an obstacle for concentration at school and outcomes creativity both adult and children

Yes...In good and bad ways...if you agree that a hungry man is an angry man then you'd get with me the negative push poverty can have but on the other hand,it can help people think outside the box in finding soslutions to their problems and bringing out hidden ingenuity

Yes...In good and bad ways...if you agree that a hungry man is an angry man then you'd get with me the negative push poverty can have but on the other hand,it can help people think outside the box in finding soslutions to their problems and bringing out hidden ingenuity

I completely agree with Mario Castro,  poverty adversely affects  individual capabilities and limits the individual's choices due to lack of entitlements. so deprivation needs to address on the priority basis. negative push may not work for everybody.

A number of factors or situations come into play here. One, the level of poverty. We wouldn't want to talk about severe destitution here where a poor person has to live under a bridge or makeshift "tent". No chance. There's not much of expectation from them. But if you talk about those categorised as in relative poverty that live in a house with TVs, proper kitchen, etc. then the answer to the question is positively yes. This group of people are those who still have access to proper education and skills training.Therefore, factor number two, accessibility to education and training through initiatives undertaken by welfare agencies may still give the chances for a person to access programmes in creativity education and training. Three, vulnerability is also a form of poverty. There are many examples of communities or even nations (and therefore its people) that have become stronger and more resilient, creative and innovative and excelled out of the necessity and urgency to escape themselves out of those vulnerabilities.

Yes, poverty affects adversely on capability-building of an individual..

Yes for sure. When you are too busy earning a living you do not have the time to spend on developing your creative skills.

There's another perspective to this. For instance if we're talking about chronic poverty, then chances are the person we're talking about has suffered from malnutrition and same will likely be the case for her/his children. It's become well established now that malnutrition during the first 1000 days is a significant predictor of diminished cognitive abilities, i.e., creative capabilities.  

Poverty does not influence cognitive abilities within some range. If the intake of calories is normal but composition is biased towards cheaper products, this should not influence talents.

I tried to stress other issues:

a) necessity to pay for talent development (courses, equipment, etc) - here rich have an advantage,

b) possibility to detect talent early (here network size plays the role, but poor might have disadvantage),

c) incentive to develop talent (here rich can be more lazy, because they may not need payoff to talent and may not sacrifice their leisure for its development).

The trade off is not obvious, but it is likely that there exists some optimal income for talent development. It should be high enough to avoid malnutrition and inability to invest in talent but low enough to create incentive.

I agree with Mr. Razza. malnourishment is a major challenge in India and Sub Saharan Africa. It not only affects the capacity to work in the later years of life but also seriously hampers cognitive development at early stages of life. 

Mulugeta, those data are interesting but questionable. Indeed, for many countries with low income education can increase it. Here we get education index of countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index , and here is the list with GDP per capita,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita . Well, maybe regressing one on the other will get what you say. But there are clear out-layers. Cuba is #102 in GDP list (CIA PPP), but has very educated people, with index 0.743, well above Brazil and China and slightly below Italy.

Can education reduce the risk of war? Just look at recent examples: Ukraine has education index of 0.796 and Lybia of  0.698.

Yes  it does in most cases. To the extent that it dampens one's will to succeed especially at a younger age. From thence a vicious cycle ensues that is likely to snuff out any latent creative ability (though not resourcefulness). A counter-case-in-point is Ramanujan, the mathematician. Some would have some reservations to this example and call it in-born talent. But I think he's was a case of ability as well as resourcefulness. Even though he was largely self-taught; he consulted available textbooks and other students of mathematics.

To succeed one needs to be resourceful and selective on what to pay attention to and how to get the attention of others. He did get the attention of G.H. Hardy after many letters to the leading mathematicians he knew. And continued to pour out a steady stream of innovative mathematics until his death. Though he covered some old ground without knowing it because of his lack of systematic grounding, which can be attributed to poverty. Now that is creativity in spite of poverty.

Poverty is a social condition in every society .Haves & haves not remain the victim of social conditions poverty has remain problems for social welfare institute & also for the respective government .

Government takes step to improve the economical condition of the lower income group & the social welfare institute offer  quite good measure for the poor children by donating clothes ,food,& in certain cases in education .

Certain children sincerity ,honest moral code of ethics ,they do not consider & accept that poverty is a crime .For their study & career development in their study progress ,they receive scholarship books ,& such other study material through that they can progress in their career .

In every society there are quite many respectable person who come out in their life totally in poverty & for the study they have used the street lamp .For person such categories ,for the reason of poverty they will not prefer to sit with fore headed hands .

For such person poverty may not remain for them their career development & achievements in other spheres .

This is my personal opinion 

To a reasonable extent, yes. This is so because your creative abilities usual requires material facilitation for full expression/exploitation and exhibition. Thus, when the environment does not make available such conducive atmosphere for creativity due to poverty, it does not only limit your scope but as well affect the quality & uniqueness of your ability.  

To some extent yes,  creative development and the availability to flourish are subject to status and financial support, creative knowledge and skills  is put aside in favour of continual existence. In today's society creative people are suppressed by the need to survive and live and avoid being stigmatise as starving artist.  Well -known and established artists however are well supported by government incentives  but for others who are merely  making ends meet has to support creativity by having a day job, sadly that's a reality that often ignored by our society for example one community consist of weavers and craftspeople who rely on the sale of their products, somehow that interconnectedness sense of community are slowly disappearing as we as society struggle to support our daily life needs. Creative development as a whole is being overlook of its potential to alleviate poverty.

Hi ,prof  Steven. Interesting question , I think. Yes, I believe it does, but not necessarily in a negative sense. Some examples that come into my mind of poor in my home country  but very creative, it depend on the psychological enviroment round him, level of interaction whith him  ,  motivate him to be creative  

Does poverty affect the development of one's creative ability?

To me it depends on the individual how s/he perceives his or her current status quo and what s/he intends to achieve as well as determination.  Reason being poor conditions like malnutrition, healthcare issue, lack of study opportunity, negative environments etc. can stifle the individual's creativity as s/he needs to be attentive to the basic needs first.  However, there are examples of poor individuals who did turnaround as they were dissatisfied with their status quo / poor conditions & determined to achieve their future goal set - hence they will do everything they can to transform including work extra hard, more persistent, never give up & think outside the box to do things different to see different results.

Dear Han Ping Fung

I agree with you. Creativity can be stifled due to poverty. Rather I would say absence of amenities that enable a person to use his ideas and creativity. But we also come across situations when poverty may also be responsible for the generation of new ideas and combinations.

Regards

Vibha 

In most of the cases, Creativity would be adversely affected by Poverty. However, in few cases; if the poverty or the time of adversity thereof is used as opportunity then the resulting creativity does wonder.

Due to impact of globalization the professional and higher education becomes costly/dearer commodity so it became  beyond the reach of the  poor in developing countries like India. It kills creativity of the poor and common people.