Advice about taking responsibility for your life assumes that you have some room to move. Even a small change can require money, time or somebody willing to help. If leaving a bad job means being unable to pay the rent, staying may be a responsible decision, however much an observer admires the courage of starting again.
That ought to complicate the way we talk about poverty and personal choice.
The Council of Europe reports that a ceremony marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The report’s title tells us little about what happened there, so it would be unwise to claim anything about its effects. The occasion does, however, invite a useful examination of what happens between publicly recognising poverty and dealing with the restrictions it places on ordinary life.
There is a temptation to assess another person’s choices as though they were choosing from the same range we have ourselves. Why do they stay there? Why don’t they retrain? Sometimes these are sincere questions. They become judgements remarkably easily when we leave out the cost of the alternative.
Yet there is a difficulty on the other side too. Describing people entirely through what they lack can make their judgement, resourcefulness and ambitions disappear. Someone living in poverty still has decisions to make and reasons for making them. Assistance that requires them to surrender every say in their own affairs carries a cost of its own.
Perhaps a useful test of help is whether it increases someone’s practical freedom. Can they refuse an unreasonable demand? Attend an appointment without losing essential income? Make a plan that extends beyond the next bill?
These questions have consequences in workplaces, families and public services. They ask something more demanding than sympathy: an examination of the conditions we attach to help, and whether those conditions make sense in the life of the person receiving it.
Responsibility remains important. That is precisely why the room to exercise it matters. Before advising someone to make a different choice, it is worth establishing whether that choice is genuinely available, and what we could do to make it possible.