Bolin’s situation was not just the result of too few hours in the day. As social psychologists who study what’s known as “decision fatigue” have found, being poor takes a huge amount of mental work. There is a constant need to weigh the merits of spending even the smallest amounts of money: yes, maybe I should buy a few extra bars of that seriously marked-down soap (one of the experimental conditions tested by a Princeton economist in poor Indian villages), but then I can’t afford this week’s medicine or food. Tagging along with Bolin at Trader Joe’s, whose very upscale-ness pointed to Bolin’s
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