Ever notice how it’s always the cousin who grew up sharing a bedroom who’s first to offer their couch when someone needs a place to crash? Or how the sibling who wore hand-me-downs is the one slipping twenties into birthday cards while everyone else gives gift cards they got free from work?
I’ve been thinking about this pattern a lot lately, especially after watching my own family dynamics play out over the years.
Growing up, I watched my parents navigate financial challenges while somehow maintaining family stability.
They never complained, never made us feel like we were missing out, but looking back, I can see how carefully they managed every dollar.
Here’s what struck me recently: The people I know who grew up with the least are generous with their time, their energy, their emotional support.
It’s like scarcity taught them something the rest of us missed.
The paradox of scarcity and generosity
You’d think people who grew up without much would hold tighter to what they have, right? That’s what basic psychology would suggest.
If resources were scarce in your past, you’d hoard them in your present.
Here’s where it gets interesting: Research from Oxford Academic indicates that reminders of resource scarcity can activate a competitive orientation, leading individuals to make decisions that advance their own welfare, which can manifest in both selfish and generous behaviors depending on the context.
The key word there? Context.
When someone who grew up with scarcity sees another person struggling, they don’t see competition.
They see themselves; they remember what it felt like to need help, to worry about making ends meet, to feel that knot in your stomach when unexpected expenses pop up.
This creates a different kind of competitive orientation, one where they’re competing against scarcity itself, not against other people.
They give because they know what it’s like to need, share because they remember when someone shared with them, and help because they understand that sometimes a small gesture can change everything.
Why abundance can breed stinginess
Now flip the script: Think about people who never had to worry about money growing up, never had to choose between new shoes and school supplies, and never watched their parents stress about bills.
For them, money has always just been there, like air because you don’t think about air until you can’t breathe.
When you grow up with abundance, generosity becomes theoretical.
You might donate to charity, sure, and you might even volunteer but there’s often a disconnect between the act of giving and understanding the real impact of that gift.
I saw this firsthand during my warehouse job in Melbourne, shifting TVs all day.
It was a humbling experience that taught me the gap between education and fulfillment, but more importantly, it showed me how differently people value things based on their background.
The guys I worked with who’d grown up working-class were always sharing their lunch, offering rides, helping each other move on weekends.
The university grads like me who’d taken the job temporarily? We kept to ourselves, saved our money, planned our exits.
The hidden psychology of “enough”
Here’s something most psychologists are just starting to understand: people who grew up with less have a fundamentally different relationship with the concept of “enough.”
When you’ve lived with scarcity, you develop an intuitive understanding of what you actually need versus what you want.
You know exactly how much is “enough” because you’ve survived on less.
This creates a fascinating psychological state where anything above your baseline feels like excess that can be shared.
Think about it: If you know you can live on $30,000 a year because you’ve done it, then making $60,000 doesn’t feel like “finally having security.”
It feels like having double what you need.
Meanwhile, someone who grew up in a household making $100,000 might feel like $60,000 is barely scraping by.
Their baseline for “enough” is so much higher that they never feel like they have excess to give.
The empathy advantage
Psychology Today notes that “Altruistic urges and behaviors are an important part of the glue that binds families and social groups together, helping them to cooperate and thrive.”
However, here’s what they don’t tell you: that glue is strongest among people who’ve experienced hardship.
Scarcity creates empathy in a way that abundance simply can’t.
When you’ve been hungry, you notice when others skip meals; when you’ve worn shoes until they fell apart, you see when someone’s been wearing the same pair for too long.
This heightened awareness is recognition, and seeing your past self in someone else’s present struggle.
That recognition triggers action in a way that abstract sympathy never could.
I spent my mid-20s feeling lost, anxious, and unfulfilled despite doing everything “right” by conventional standards.
During that warehouse period, feeling like my education was wasted and my potential squandered, the only people who really got it were the ones who’d been there themselves.
They offered practical help: A meal here, a lead on a better job there, or someone to talk to when things got dark.
Breaking the cycle (or not)
There’s another layer to this that we need to talk about: Some people who grow up with scarcity do become extremely tight with money.
They hoard resources, count every penny, and struggle to share even when they have plenty.
Here’s the distinction: These folks are usually still operating from a place of fear.
They haven’t processed their scarcity trauma, so they’re still living in it mentally, even if their bank account says otherwise.
The generous ones? They’ve transformed their scarcity experience into something else.
They’ve decided that the antidote to scarcity is sharing, and they’re actively working to make sure others don’t experience what they did.
Research from the University of Illinois suggests that fostering gratitude can decrease materialism and increase generosity in adolescents, indicating that psychological interventions can influence generosity behaviors.
But you know what creates gratitude faster than any intervention? Experiencing lack and then experiencing relief.
Knowing what it’s like to need and then to receive.
Final words
The most generous person in your family probably isn’t the one with the most money.
They’re the one who knows what it’s like to have the least; they’re generous not in spite of their background, but because of it.
Their scarcity taught them that money is just a tool, that community matters more than cash, and that sometimes the difference between despair and hope is someone willing to share what little they have.
Next time you see that family member who’s always the first to help, the quickest to offer, the most likely to share, take a moment to recognize what’s really happening.
They’re actively rewriting the story of scarcity, one generous act at a time.
Maybe that’s the deepest truth about generosity: It’s about remembering what it was like to need, and deciding that if you can help it, nobody else should have to feel that alone.
