An index for tropes dealing with lower-class people living in squalor and/or struggling with debt, bankruptcy, unemployment, homelessness, or just an overall lack of wealth or fiscal standing.
Contrast with Rich People and Luxury Tropes. See also Class Relations Index for how lower class people interact with other social classes.
Tropes:
- Bankruptcy Barrel: When the character is wearing a barrel to show that they are poor.
- Barefoot Poverty: Some people are so poor that they can't even afford to buy a new pair of shoes.
- Basement-Dweller: A grown man still lives with his parents, because he's a chronically unemployed NEET (or works a crappy low-wage job), and thus can't even afford his own house.
- Bath of Poverty: Bathing isn't a good experience due to being unable to afford proper plumbing.
- Beggar with a Signboard: Hobos hold up signs requesting money, food, or other things.
- Bindle Stick
- Broke Episode: One episode has the characters run out of money and have to find a way to make ends meet.
- Cardboard Box Home: Homeless people live in cardboard boxes.
- Crazy Homeless People: Homeless people are often depicted as being mentally ill, as mental disorders can be both a cause and effect of homelessness. Bonus points if their mental state is being affected by a drug addiction.
- Credit Card Destruction: Someone who maxes out their credit card has it cut up by a shopkeeper.
- Cutting Corners
- Disposable Sex Worker: Prostitutes and strippers tend to be at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, thus making them easy prey for serial killers and rapists.
- Disposable Vagrant: Most people don't really notice or care about what happens to homeless people, which makes them easy targets for kidnappers and murderers.
- Dublin Skanger: A stock character in Irish media who's usually working class and extremely violent.
- Dying Town: Small towns with severe economic hardships.
- Empty Fridge, Empty Life
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: A person desperate for money will take on a job that they, and society, sees as unglamorous and/or undignified.
- Financial Test of Friendship
- Fingerless Gloves: Poor people often wear fingerless gloves.
- Forgot to Pay the Bill: This can happen if someone just doesn't have enough money to pay for their important bills.
- "Friends" Rent Control: Realistically, a character does not earn an income to justify such ample lodgings.
- Hobos: Stereotypical homeless people.
- Homeless Pigeon Person: Hobos with pet pigeon birds.
- Horrible Housing: A character lives somewhere crappy to emphasize their bad living situation.
- Informed Poverty: A character is allegedly poor, but are apparently richer than they've claimed to be.
- Inner City School: Education tends to be abysmal in poor urban neighborhoods.
- Sucky School: Poorly-funded schools are staffed by teachers who are jaded or mean-spirited, run by an indifferent or sadistic principal, lack up-to-date technology, and use outdated textbooks.
- Jobless Parent Drama: A family faces financial difficulties because one or both parents are now unemployed.
- Just Like Robin Hood: A thief who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
- Kill the Poor: The poor are killed in an attempt to eliminate poverty.
- King of the Homeless: The self-appointed leader of a homeless community.
- Land Poor
- Lint Value: Offering far too little money to buy something, often because it's all they have.
- Lives in a Van: They live in a vehicle because they can't even afford a house.
- Lower-Class Lout: A jerkass who is poor.
- Mock Millionaire: A lower-class or middle-class person pretends to be upper-class.
- Ms. Red Ink
- Mundane Luxury: A common, widely available item will be considered an extravagant treat by anyone who can't afford to buy it on an everyday basis.
- NEET: Someone who is Not in Employment, Education, or Training. In other words, an adult who is not currently a college student and is also unemployed.
- No Budget: A creative project obviously didn't get much funding or resources.
- No Poverty: A society where poverty and squalor are nonexistent.
- Pauper Patches: A character's tattered, patched-up clothes indicates poverty.
- Penny Among Diamonds
- Perpetual Poverty: Despite having little money, these people always have just enough supplies and resources to survive.
- Pottery Barn Poor: Despite barely scraping by, a character's home is furnished with items that they could not afford without sacrificing food or rent.
- Poverty Food: Because food that's both healthy and tasty is out of their budget.
- Dog Food Diet: Someone eats pet food, because people food is too expensive.
- Poverty for Comedy: Being poor is Played for Laughs.
- Poverty Porn: Depictions of people living in extreme poverty in close detail to bring attention to them.
- Prince and Pauper: Two identical strangers, one upper-class and the other one lower-class, decide to switch lives and disguise themselves as each other.
- Rags to Riches: A poor person becomes wealthy.
- Rags to Royalty: A commoner becomes a member of the nobility.
- Rich Language, Poor Language: Rich and poor characters are distinguished by their accents and/or dialects.
- Rich Suitor, Poor Suitor: Someone has two love interests of vastly different economic backgrounds.
- Riches to Rags: A wealthy person becomes poor.
- Impoverished Patrician: A noble or aristocrat who has lost their wealth.
- Princess in Rags: Her Highness is now living in less than luxurious circumstances.
- Impoverished Patrician: A noble or aristocrat who has lost their wealth.
- Secretly Wealthy: A rich person pretends to be poorer than they actually are.
- Slumming It: A wealthy person pretends to be poor because they're curious about what life is like for the less fortunate.
- Slobs vs. Snobs: The eternal struggle between the rich and the poor.
- Starving Artist: An artist who doesn't make any money off their works.
- Starving Student: A student who's struggling to finance their education.
- Street Urchin: Homeless orphans and street children.
- Streetwalker: Prostitutes, who probably wouldn't be selling sex for money if they were rich.
- Struggling Single Mother: She's having a hard time raising her kid(s) with no father and little money to spare.
- Single Mom Stripper: So she turns to stripping or prostitution to put bread on the table.
- The Tramp
- Unconfessed Unemployment: Someone won't admit to their own friends and family that they've lost their job.
- Wallet Moths: Moths fly out of wallets or pockets to indicate the character has no money.
- War Refugees: Civilians who have been rendered homeless by the chaos and destruction of war, fleeing for their lives by staying in refugee camps or migrating to safer countries.
- Wisdom from the Gutter
- Work Off the Debt: If you can't pay, you'll have to work for the business until you've earned the money required to pay.
- Working-Class Hero: The protagonist is a member of the lower-classes of society.
- Homeless Hero: The protagonist lives a nomadic lifestyle for some reason.
- Working-Class People Are Morons: Poor people are depicted as being dumb and ignorant because of their lack of education.
- Working-Class Werewolves: Werewolves are often depicted as being poor, at least compared to vampires.
- Wretched Hive: Urban ghettos, slums, shantytowns and the like are not pleasant places to live in, because of the rampant poverty and crime.
