Recommended Citation
Emily R. Murphy,
Brains Without Money: Poverty as Disabling, 54
Conn. L. Rev.
699
(2022).
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/faculty_scholarship/1939
Publication Date
2022
Abstract
e United States has long treated poverty and disability as separate legal and social categories, a division grounded in widespread assumptions about the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. In the case of disability, individuals generally are not thought to be morally responsible for their disadvantage, whereas in the case of poverty, individuals are assumed to be at fault for their disadvantage and are therefore less deserving of aid. This Article argues that recent advances in brain and behavioral science undermine the factual basis for those assumptions. Poverty inhibits brain development during childhood and, later in life, adversely affects cognitive capacities that are key to decision-making and long-term planning. The science of scarcity is complex and ongoing, but its most basic finding is quickly approaching consensus: poverty’s effects in the brain can be disabling. This Article argues that understanding poverty as disabling has potentially significant implications for policy and doctrine. Viewing poverty as disabling would provide support for poverty programs with less sludge and more money: proposals such as universal basic income, negative income tax, child grants, and greatly simplified benefits determinations. It also reanimates insertion of social welfare concerns into the dominant civil rights framework for disability policy, and it could resolve longstanding tensions between disjointed federal disability laws. In addition, brain and behavioral science may support litigation strategies to compel accessibility to existing systems and potentially help promote a new public understanding of the causes of poverty. The Article concludes by considering the potential (and significant) downsides of using the lens of science in service of policy: backlash, misunderstanding, and the fragility of relying on nascent science to support fundamentally normative policy goals. One necessary mitigation strategy involves the careful translation of science, including its limitations and residual uncertainties, into legal sholarship, an approach this Article attempts to both articulate and model.
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Connecticut Law Review