People don't believe they'll literally drop dead next month. But they believe they'll get kicked out of their apartment if they can't pay rent. If that happens, they might end up losing their job after not being able to show up for a few days in order to find a new place if that's even possible. Being poor is miserable. You know how you might lament that due to your full time job you have so little time to spend on your interests and hobbies? Likewise, poor people have very little time or the mental bandwidth to think about doing things that only pay off in the long term. They're focused on surviving to next month. So they spend money on groceries instead of on coding lessons or something which won't get them a better job any time soon. They're probably right anyway. What's the point of learning to code when companies wouldn't hire them in a million years instead of a college graduate or someone with previous experience in the field. So you can imagine how many people are condemned to forever working food service jobs or other such work.