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Some people say poor people have poor ways, the implication being that they are poor because of their poor ways. These authors maintain that the reverse is true, that people have poor ways because they are poor. They say it can be explained by the psychology of scarcity.

What will suprise many readers is that rich (or non-poor) persons manifest the same behavior attributed to poor people when subjected to situations of scarcity (e.g. lack of time). In other words, the rich often have poor ways too, but they have enough money of cover the fiscal mistakes. However, the psycholgy of scarcity can show up in scarcity of time and friends as well as money and the psychology of scarcity can come into play for all social and economic classes.

This book finds surprising links and similarities between the stressed-out time-poor of the west with the truly poor dollar-a-day workers of the developing world. Many wealthy people who are critical of the behavior of poor people will be surprised to learn from this book that they share the same behavior patterns as the very poor when in an environment of scarcity. The psychology of scarcity and its resulting behavior can be witnessed when there's a scarcity of time, money, or relationships with others.

Two terms repeatedly used in this book are "bandwidth" and "tunneling." Bandwidth refers the limited number of things that any human can focus on at one time. The results of this limited bandwidth leads to a kind of cognitive tunnel, limiting what a person is able to focus on at one time. Limited bandwidth and tunneling depletes self control and leads to impulsive and sometimes dumb behavior. Unfortunately this behavior can spiral into a trap of worsening scarcity.

The authors bring an abundance of examples from their respective fields of study to support their descriptions of the psychological and behavioral consequences of the feeling of scarcity. Sendhil Mullainathan is a behavioral economist and Eldar Shafir is a cognitive psychologist.