The Pradox of Poverty - Why is it so hard to escape poverty ??

Story 

 Oh, like you been unemployed and seeking work for months, government benefit programs have helped. You cover rent utilities and food, but you're only getting about. Finally, you hear back about a job application. You receive your first paycheck in months and things seem to be turning around, but there's a catch. 

Your new job pays just enough to disqualify you and the benefit programs and not enough to cover the same cost, to make things worse, have to pay for transportation to work and childcare, while you're at the office. Somehow you have less money now than when you were unemployed. Economists call this demoralizing situation. 

The welfare trap, one of the many different poverty traps affecting millions of people around the world, poverty traps, or economic and environmental circumstances that reinforce themselves or pitcher waiting poverty for generations. Some poverty traps are tied to an individual circumstance like a lack of access to healthy food or education. 

Others can affect entire nations, such as cycles of corrupt government, climate change, but the cruel irony of welfare traps in particular is that they stemmed from the very policies designed to most societies throughout history, employed some strategies to help people in poverty meet basic needs before the twentieth century. Religious groups and private charities often lead such initiatives today. These are called welfare programs and they usually take the form of government provided subsidies for housing, food, energy and health. 

Typically, these programs are means tested, meaning that only people who fall below a certain income level are eligible for benefits. This policy is designed to ensure a boost to those who need it most, but it also means people lose access as soon as they earn more than the qualification threshold, regardless of whether or not they're financially stable. Well enough to stay there. This dish cycle is harmful to both those in poverty outside of it mainstream economic models. 

Assume people are rational actors who weigh the costs and benefits of their options and choose the most advantageous path forward. If those in poverty- and you know they'll gain, you know, net benefit from working they're incentivized to remain in government assistance. 

Of course, people work for many reasons, including societal norms and personal values, but income is a major incentive to pursuing employment and when let people take on a new job, the economy slows down keeping people in poverty and potentially pushing people on the cusp of poverty over the edge. 

Some of the suggested this feedback loop could be removed by eliminating government assisted programs altogether most degree. This solution is neither realistic nor humane. So how can we redesign benefits in a way that doesn't penalize people for working? Many countries have tried different ways to circumvent this problem. Some allow people to continue receiving benefits for a given period after finding a job, others.