Globally, financial hardship arising from overspending and over-indebtedness, and often leading to poverty, strongly hampers peoples' life satisfaction, well-being, and health. Going beyond the immediate economic issues, psychology has much to offer to identify potential causes and consequences of financial hardship and interventions on how to handle these problems. Many publications in developmental psychology explore the detrimental impact of financial hardship on children's development, their behavior, health, and their neurological development. Other fields in psychology are focused on the question of how financial hardship affects peoples' economic decisions and economic behavior. Most importantly, recent research has explored the psychological factors that lead to overspending, over-indebtedness, and poverty, and offered possible interventions to fight the poverty trap. The present article reviews recent research on these topics.

在全球范围内，过度支出和过度负债导致的经济困难，往往导致贫困，严重阻碍了人们的生活满意度、福祉和健康。除了眼前的经济问题之外，心理学还可以提供很多帮助来确定经济困难的潜在原因和后果以及如何处理这些问题的干预措施。许多发展心理学出版物探讨了经济困难对儿童发育、行为、健康和神经发育的不利影响。心理学的其他领域关注经济困难如何影响人们的经济决策和经济行为的问题。最重要的是，最近的研究探索了导致超支、过度负债和贫困的心理因素，并提供了可能的干预措施来对抗贫困陷阱。本文回顾了最近关于这些主题的研究。