1 . New research finds a link between poverty and poor decision making. The findings may explain why poor people sometimes make bad choices that continue their hardship.

Earlier studies have found the poor less likely to escape poverty. But there has been little research on why the poor make decisions that make their lives harder. Until recently, Eldar Shafir, a psychologist and his team did two experiments. One took place at a shopping center in New Jersey. The other was carried out among sugar cane (甘蔗) farmers in rural India.

The New Jersey experiment involved individuals with low paying jobs and others belonged to the middle class. All the volunteers were asked what they would do if their cars needed repairing.

The volunteers were given two imaginary situations. In the first, the car repair cost $150. In the second, $1,500.

“In the first, the poor and the rich performed equally well.”

“And when the repair cost $1,500, the poor performed significantly worse.” The poor lost about 13 IQ points on average. This is about the loss experienced when a person has not slept for one night.

The scientists then wondered if the same person reacted differently when he was rich and when he was poor. Once a year when the harvest comes in, the India sugar cane farmers earn most of their money, which often does not last through the year.

“So they find themselves basically rich after the harvest when the income comes in and poor just before the harvest.”

The researchers gave them tests similar to the ones taken by the people in New Jersey. They tested the Indian farmers before the harvest and after.

And the results were much the same as with the mall shoppers.

“They performed much more slowly and made many more mistakes when they were poor than when they were rich.”

Mr. Shafir says the results support 50 years of research that shows all humans have limited mental power to deal with things in life.

“And so the insight here is that, having not enough of something in a way makes it harder to make good decisions for everything else.”

In 2014, 40.8 percent of the people in the village of Bianjiang in Guizhou Province     1     (be) struggling with poverty. The village,     2     (surround) by deep mountains, was 80 kilometers from Yanhe County. It took villagers four hours     3     (make) a round trip to buy daily     4     (necessary) outside the village, given that no roads were     5     (access) except for a narrow pass along the cliff’s edge.

As poverty alleviation (扶贫) proceeds and the road system in the village improves, industries such as fish, chicken farming and growing mums have been developed. Now, a family of five can earn an average of 10,000 yuan ($1,435) a year through employment and industry bonuses. China     6     (rebuild) 108,000 schools since 2013 to improve compulsory education in poverty-stricken areas. Over 98 percent of villages have access to optical fiber communications and 4G technology.

Through the alleviation project, China, home to nearly one     7     (five) of the world’s population, has     8     (complete) got rid of extreme poverty,     9     (make) an important contribution     10     the cause of global poverty alleviation.