Using Spent’s Online Poverty Simulation To Teach Family and Consumer Sciences College Students About Poverty

Family and consumer sciences (FCS) is an interdisciplinary field in which professionals, regardless of their specialty area, will most likely need to interact with individuals and families in poverty. Several tools are available to help instructors teach college students about poverty. The Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) has been widely used throughout FCS programming (Nickols & Nielsen, 2011); however, other poverty simulations (e.g., Spent https://playspent.org) are not referenced in the literature. More than 100 students in college-level family resource management courses completed the Spent poverty simulation from 2015 through 2019. In this paper, we provide an overview of the state of poverty and the use of poverty simulations in higher education. The authors offer tips for readers looking to implement a virtual poverty simulation in their FCS courses.

Poverty

Individuals earning below a certain income level (e.g., $13,590 for a single person in 2022) are deemed to be living in poverty (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2022). According to Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy (2022), an estimated 13% of households in April 2022 live in poverty. This figure increased from a 2019 figure of 10.5% partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Semega et.al., 2020). Poverty has many fatal effects that span all FCS disciplines including family financial planning, nutrition, child development, and marriage and family therapy. For instance, FCS housing professionals might be interested in poverty’s implications for affordable housing, and child development professionals might be interested in the ways poverty limits children’s educational attainment.

Poverty is caused by both internal factors and structural factors.

The Need for CAPS in College Classrooms

Like many Americans, college students also have developed attributions toward poverty (Hunt, 2004). Poverty is caused by both internal factors and structural factors (Bradshaw, 2007). Examples of internal factors are a lack of work ethic, welfare-dependency, and lack of human capital. Even though structural factors (e.g., the rise of low-wage jobs) also contribute to poverty, college students are more likely to believe that internal factors are the sole contributor of poverty (Coryn, 2002; Lino et al., 2017; Semega et al., 2020). Properly teaching FCS students about poverty can help them better serve low-income clients in their future professions. Efforts such as the Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) were found to be effective in increasing empathy for impoverished people and changing participants’ attitudes toward poverty (Arnett-Hartwick & Davis, 2019; Nickols & Nielsen, 2011).

CAPS has been used in University Cooperative Extension programs (Chapman & Gibson, 2006; Franck et al., 2016). These studies demonstrated the effectiveness of CAPS on attitude change (Arnett-Hartwick & Davis, 2019; Arnett-Hartwick & Harpel, 2020), increased empathy (Nickols & Nielsen, 2011), and general increase in the understanding of poverty (Kihm & Knapp, 2015). The literature covers several FCS areas including, but not limited to, human development and family studies, FCS education (Arnett-Hartwick & Davis, 2019), family resource management (Nickols & Nielsen, 2011), and nutrition (Nnakwe, 2020). Research on the use of CAPS also has included non-college students such as FCS teachers (ArnettHartwick & Harpel, 2020).

These studies underscore the utility and effectiveness of CAPS for both FCS college students and FCS secondary education teachers. FCS professionals serve their communities so it is imperative that their programs are sensitive to those of low socioeconomic status. Therefore, teaching FCS college students about the lived and complex realities of poverty may contribute to better FCS programming and help them to better serve their communities.

Spent

While CAPS has been used widely in higher education, the use of virtual simulations such as Spent are not as well documented in the literature. Spent is a free platform created by the Urban Ministries of Durham in February 2011. It has been used by more than 2 million users (Urban Ministries of Durham, 2021). Spent players begin the “month” with $1,000, no job, no apartment, and no savings. They navigate a series of choices such as selecting a job, health insurance plan, and living arrangement. The goal is to survive through the end of the month with the money they have. Like the CAPS studies, literature has shown that Spent was effective in changing college students’ attitudes toward poverty (Hernández-Ramos et al., 2019; Parks, 2023). Due to the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19, FCS professionals might have limited ability to offer the in-person CAPS simulation. Therefore, the Spent simulation might be a viable alternative because it is a free, open-access tool that is easy to administer and less labor-intensive than the CAPS program. The program can be accessed via https://www.playspent.org/ and typically takes under 20 minutes to complete.

Strategies for Implementing Spent in FCS College Classes

FCS professionals looking to offer the Spent poverty simulation to their students could benefit from the following tips. First, they should develop learning objectives that fit their course goals. Examples include increasing empathy toward those living in poverty and fostering understanding about poverty (Kihm & Knapp, 2015; Nickols & Nielsen, 2011). Nutrition, food sciences, and dietetics-based classes could focus on the ways in which poverty limits one’s ability to purchase healthy food. During the simulation, some participants are asked to purchase groceries with limited money. Housing-based courses might focus on the tradeoff between affordable housing and proximity to one’s work. Additionally, issues such as slumlords, affordable housing, and eviction play out in the simulation. Consumer economics and financial planning-based courses will be able to form learning objectives related to tradeoffs, opportunity costs, the Affordable Care Act, and other consumer policies such as minimum wage laws. Last, child development, human development, and family sciences courses could explore the impact of the participants’ actions on their fictitious child in the simulation. Topics such as child educational attainment and child nutrition emerge from the simulation. future careers regardless of their area of study. We have offered tools for FCS instructors on how to implement Spent in their classes. Future FCS programming should consider the free Spent poverty simulation for in-person and online assignments. Since 2014, the authors have read 104 students’ reflections after completing the Spent poverty simulation and believe the lessons learned by the students have helped them have more empathy toward those struggling with poverty and they now have a better understanding of the lived experience of poverty.

After learning objectives are established for why the simulation is necessary, the instructor should consider how they will implement the simulation. The Spent simulation works well as both an in-person activity or as an asynchronous activity. The authors became familiar with the program by using it in place of the CAPS face-to-face poverty simulation during the 2014 fall semester of a family resource management course (88 students) and as a make-up assignment option for those who were not able to attend an in-person CAPS program in 2015 (3 students), 2018 (4 students), and 2019 (9 students). Students will need at least 20 minutes to complete the simulation. It is important to debrief the students after they have completed the program with questions such as What was your experience with this simulation? This will help students process their experiences. During this course, students wrote a reflection paper based on various questions (see Appendix A). After reading the 104 family resource management students’ reflection papers, the authors noticed that students found the exercise to be meaningful and they articulated connections between the simulation and the course’s content.

References

Arnett-Hartwick, S., & Davis, T. S. (2019). Poverty simulation participation: Transformative learning outcomes among family and consumer sciences students. Journal of Research in Technical Careers, 3(2), 24. https://eric. ed.gov/?id=EJ1245572.

Arnett-Hartwick, S., & Harpel, T. (2020). FCS teacher transformation: A shift in poverty perceptions. Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences, 112(1), 23–29. doi:10.14307/JFCS112.1.23

Bradshaw, T. K. (2007). Theories of poverty and antipoverty programs in community development. Community Development, 38(1), 7–25. https://doi. org/10.1080/15575330709490182

Chapman, S., & Gibson, S. (2006). Poverty simulation: A useful tool for creating a common understanding of the obstacles facing low-income families in Georgia. Proceedings of the Eastern Family Economics and Resource Management Association. https://www.fermascholar.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/06/8-poverty-simulation.pdf

Columbia University Center on Poverty & Social Policy. (2022, December). Monthly poverty rate. https://www. povertycenter.columbia.edu/forecasting-monthly-povertydata

Coryn, C. L. S. (2002). Antecedents of attitudes toward the poor. Indiana University South Bend Undergraduate Research Journal, 5, 13–19. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/ viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1076.6972&rep=rep1&type=p df

Franck, K. L., Barnes, S., & Harrison, J. (2016). Poverty simulations: Building relationships among extension, schools, and the community. Journal of Extension, 54(1), 9. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/joe/vol54/iss1/9/ Hernández-Ramos, P., Bachen, C., Raphael, C., Ifcher, J., & Broghammer, M. (2019). Experiencing poverty in an online simulation: Effects on players’ beliefs, attitudes and behaviors about poverty. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 13(3), 15–34. doi:10.5817/CP2019-3-1

Conclusion

It is important for FCS college students to have exposure to poverty in preparation for their

Hunt, M. O. (2004). Race/ethnicity and beliefs about wealth and poverty. Social Science Quarterly, 85(3), 827–853. doi:10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00247.x

Kihm, H., & Knapp, S. (2015). The poverty simulator: Experiential learning for family and consumer sciences students. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences Education, 32(1), 24–28. http://natefacs.org/Pages/v32no1/ v32no1KihmSimulator.pdf

Lino, M., Kuczynski, K., Rodriguez, N., & Schap, T. (2017). Expenditures on children by families, 2015 (Report No. 1528-2015). United States Department of Agriculture, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. https:// ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/327257/files/crc2015march2017.pdf

Nickols, S., & Nielsen, R. (2011). “So many people are struggling”: Developing social empathy through a poverty simulation. Journal of Poverty, 15(1), 22–42. doi:10.1080 /10875549.2011.539400

Nnakwe, N. (2020). Using poverty simulation to help nutrition students develop sensitivity toward low-income individuals. Journal of Poverty, 25(4), 309–317. doi: 10.1080/10875549.2020.1840481

Parks, J. M. (2023). “It’s not always poor decisions”: Shifts in business student’s attitudes toward poverty after completing Spent. Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence, 7(1), 7. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1122&context=jete

Semega, J. L., Kollar, M. A., Shrider, E. A., & Creamer, J. F. (2020). Income and poverty in the United States: 2019 (Report No. P60-270). United States Census Bureau, Current Population Survey. https://www.census.gov/ library/publications/2020/demo/p60-270.html

Urban Ministries of Durham. (2021). Play Spent. https:// www.umdurham.org/spent.html

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. (2022). HHS poverty guidelines for 2022. https:// aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/ poverty-guidelines

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Appendix A

Student Reflection Paper Prompts

1. Summarize your experience with Spent. Please provide a discussion of three choices you were faced with and the outcomes associated with them.

2. Prior to this simulation, what has been your experience with poverty? If you haven’t had much, then please indicate so.

3. Before completing this poverty simulation, what did you believe to be the cause of poverty in the United States?

4. After completing the poverty simulation, what do you believe to be the major cause of poverty?

5. How do you think this experience will help you in your future or current business career? Which actions are worthy of consideration?

6. Compared to people in the poverty simulation, I expect my life to be _____ (similar, easier, more difficult). Using the insights you gained about personal and family resources, as well as external social and economic environments, explain the contrasts (or similarities) in your anticipated future and the future of someone growing up or living below the poverty guideline or threshold.