POVERTY AND MONEY: A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW

The basic goal of this article is to show the psychological aspects of money problems analysing exactly the psychological causes leading to poverty. Through literature analysis and various poverty theories the article focuses on causes stimulating dysfunctional relations with money, and consequently – with poverty. The article summarises the opinions of a number of psychologists and therapists about the causes and reasons of money problems, and about the determinants of human behaviour and choice. The article analyses the possible people’s relations with money, and answers are sought to the question – how to avoid facilitating “inheritance of poverty” so that the dysfunctional model of monetary relations would not be transferred from generation to generation. The article analyses how dysfunctional or psychologically wrong relations with money (money relations) lead to despair and material poverty. The author offers her own view on constructive and destructive monetary relations, and the answer is sought to the question ñ how to change these relations from destructive to constructive ones. The author of this article has developed her own model of human monetary behaviour; she distinguishes four behavioural groups indicating the characteristic features of these groups and problems that the representatives of each group have to encounter. At the end of the article the author has worked out recommendations for poverty prevention in Latvia.