Poverty is a great motivator.
Poverty makes you worry. You ask yourself questions like how you will pay the rent next month, how to buy affordable food, how to deal with social deprivation because of lack of money. That worrying paralyzes, and destroys so much potential.
This is the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research.
There are literally 1000s of hours of research and writing to match.
University of Washington (in my backyard) also has a poverty research center.
A central take away, if you don't feel like reading is that poverty makes everything else in life at least 2x harder. It's like compounding interest on debt.
That research is one reason I support universal basic income.
On the other hand, worrying and doubting makes one submissive, and there are people who profit from having others working for them. So, I expect strong opposition to universal basic income.