Some people inherit poverty and poor choices. That makes it much harder to lift themselves out of poverty, since they weren't the ones who made the poor choices that got them there in the first place.

Surely education about choices plus an actual opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty would help. I knew a lot of people who made poor choices because they didn't think they had a choice. (I mean, just look at "Trailer Park Boys"... I actually KNOW people who think like that... do something illegal in order to have enough money to go clean... Yikes. Ok, some of those people may just be dumb... but why is that, also? We're back to poor prenatal and childhood nutrition, again.)