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It also goes other way round. Just as bad behavior cause economical problems, economical problems cause social and behavioral problems.

If you live in a place with huge unemployment rates, not much to do and little hope for future, you are more likely to start drinking or get into trouble. The effect can be seen when local economy goes down the drain while the people stay in place - problems goes up usually.

To add to it, when people try and fail multiple time, they often give up entirely. Then they are unable to help themselves even if it is actually possible (learned helplessness). If your changes to succeed in whatever you have been trying as young were too low, you might have concluded that there is no point trying anymore.



I see a thermodynamics corollary there.

The overall "temperature" in an area is the mean income of an area. Colder is poorer. You may be able to apply some heat here and there, but any source of heat (money) is drained and attempts to balance out with the ambient cold temperature. And given the expanse of a cold mass, a localized heat source is nary enough to raise the ambient temp by fractions of a degree.

This cold temp is what we would call a blight or distressed neighborhood. The way to fix this is to raise the temperature everywhere by broad injects of money/goods/services.




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