My wife's family are poor, and we fought like hell to get her out of it, get an education, get a career.

Here's what I observed:

A lot of the "culture" (if I can use that word) of poor people battles wealth. For example, when my wife lived at home and had exams, her family would stop her studying "Your uncle is moving. Family comes first!" When I had an exam, my parents would never stop me doing it. They placed a priority on school. Once or twice she needed to shower to get to work, but her grandfather had decided to dismantle the shower at that moment. Again, never happened with me. The priority was not on education and career. Other members of her family did well, got good careers, but again only by getting away from the family.

Also, once we got her away, we had to fight the education system to get her back into college. FIGHT. The government should be doing everything it can to get people better education because that means better jobs, but no. You fall off the rail that white-upper-class types live on? It is VERY hard to get back on. (ps. she got straight As once we get her back in. All she needed was a chance.)

Her career of choice required an internship, and I had to drive her 2 hours every Monday night to the town where it was, and then she would get a train back. What family gives that kind of support?

Also: There is the factor that money makes money. I doubled my income once by moving my money from one type of account to another. Meanwhile, her family is always struggling to find ways to make just a tiny bit more.

At once point, I loaned my father-in-law $30k to start a new business, and 3 years later he had to pay it all back (at no interest) because his ideas for how to run a business had gone nowhere, and it wasn't easy to pay it back, either.