Those in poverty are born into it. It’s not as if all impoverished people made catastrophic mistakes and therefore live in squalor.

Those in poverty do not have access to adequate education. Capable teachers, ample materials & resources—none are to the standard of higher socioeconomic classes.

For those in poverty, without education, personal and skill development is difficult at best, impossible at worst. There is no way to learn the necessary information, acquire the necessary skills, or gain the necessary experience to land jobs that make enough money to rise above the poverty line.

How lucky I am to be able to use the word “those.” Indeed, luck: by chance I was born into a middle-class family in a certain part of the world. Just as easily I could have been born somewhere else, with completely different circumstances.

There’s not even a good way to say “people in poverty.” Nothing sounds appropriate. Impoverished. Destitute. Poverty-stricken. Deprived. Underprivileged. Poor person. Disadvantaged. What do we even call it?

The most prodigious economists disagree on how to attack this inequality. But the first step, for all of us, is to consider and recognize the above facts. To consider others’ plight, to empathize with it. Once we do that, anything is possible. Our humanity will overcome.