Nice story, but where’s the data to back it up?
Is this a test to see who noticed the three Ts in “atttention”?
That was my guess. 
Understanding the big picture is not the same as not paying attention to details.
For example, the upper management where I work are very detailed oriented, to the point of being pedantic. But they aren’t “doers”. They don’t really know how to actually implement all their grand ideas. They are great at coming up with a business strategy, but we don’t have working phones. It’s more like an academics attention to detail, creating a great book report as opposed to an engineers attention to detail in building something.
Perhaps what really counts is which details you pay attention to. We used to have armies of poorly paid, meticulous book keepers. They have largely been replaced with computers, cheaper yet and extremely good with details. Mine would have put a red line under atttention.
Actually, there are 4 T’s in “atttention”.
/What do I win?
I could see this, but I don’t have a cite. People in poverty have to be concerned with paying rent and keeping food on the table and paying for the gas to get to and from work. People who have those basic needs taken care of have more mental resources available to worry about other things.
It’s also hard to focus on studies if you’re hungry or cold or you have to work a part time job after school and give that money to your mother or babysit your siblings because your single parent has to work three jobs to pay for the basics of your life. Think Charlie Bucket vs Veruca Salt.
My experience is consistent with the validity of the OP’s theory. As someone who grew up in a relatively affluent community but has also lived in some rather impoverished ones as a young adult, the difference is remarkable not just in the external surroundings but the attitudes and behaviors of the people. And attention to detail is definitely one of those things that is grossly lacking in the more impoverished communities. Without getting too philosophical, on the most fundamental level it comes down to survival mechanisms, as others have posited. It’s easier to care about and notice the little things when your basic food, shelter, and security needs are well taken care of than it is when you’re constantly worried about making the rent/child support payments and staying out of trouble (which is everywhere in the ghetto).
ETA: There’s also the intelligence aspect, which people don’t like to admit but is true nonetheless. Well-off people are smarter, on average, than poor people. Or to put it another way, smart people are more likely to be well-off than dumb people.
I explained I was oversimplifying the issue, but in Outliers Malcolm Gladwell wrote about how attitudes and perceptions can have an affect on whether or not someone succeeds, and he specifically addresses that people who grew up in disadvantaged backgrounds may not have the social guidance to give the right impressions to future employers or other people who might determine their success. Luck, or the right opportunities at the right times, also plays in.
Also Jonathan Kozol wrote extensively on the subject.
I’m not trying to say it’s always the system that’s the problem and never the individual. I’m just trying to point out that children growing up in poverty do not necessarily triumph through sheer will alone. Innate talent and intelligence are not the only factors that make one a success.
The average Domino’s pizza is more intricately flavored than the typical foods of American rich people. If you’re lucky they will have salt at the table.
Or maybe it was just so intricately flavored that it was too subtle for me; that’s a possibility.
She-it, with brainpower like that, you should be showering us with your million$. 
Was the book written by Ruby Payne, by any chance? She wrote a book aimed towards educators titled “A Framework for Understanding Poverty” which discusses what she considers to be the “hidden rules” for each social class (poverty, middle class, wealth) and how they affect the educational process. I believe she has also gone on to write additional books that examine the impact of her hidden rules in other contexts such as the workplace, relationships, etc.
Is this a U.S. Centric reading? As an anecdote, I’ve heard stories about dirt poor orthodox jews in Israel who are supported by the state while they memorize the Torah. That sounds like an attention to detail for me!
I’m a musician. History is littered with stories of the “starving artist,” who creates entirely new worlds of discourse, and understands old ones with savant-like perception. All while making shitty amounts of money.
So…I guess my question is what sort of details richies are better attuned to paying attention to. Financial ones? Yeah, that makes sense, I guess! And water is wet!
I think it comes down to which details are important. I’ve seen poor people memorize multiple bus schedules so they know how much time to allow to get to work, how much time they have to connect to another bus, how late they’ll be if they miss the connection and exactly how long they can wait to see the doctor at the clinic and still make the last bus home.
Ditto with shopping. When you’re trying to stretch until the next paycheck, knowing where you can save 50 cents on toilet paper becomes a big deal.
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There was a family reunion in the beginning of the month, in St. Louis. My great uncle (poor) who got this together told me it was “off Hamilton near those animals at some park”. Good thing I have some familiarity that city…it was actually of HAMPTON two blocks away from the zoo, in Forest Park.
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To be fair, Hamilton also runs pretty close to Forest Park.
A lot of wealthy ppl are slovenly in every sense of the word, & vague about a lot of things.
A lot of poor ppl are mentally lazy because ppl tend to rise up to what’s expected of them.
And then you have ppl who have Class (which transcends socio-economic levels.) Doesn’t matter if they have two bucks in their wallet or a gold card, they take other ppl into consideration. (Thereby simply giving better directions or remembering that they still owe you for lunch the other day because all they’d had was a $100 bill.)
“Class” cares about other ppl----like Princess Di & Mother Theresa (different sides of the same coin.)
Strictly based on my observations, I do think there is a certain type of vagueness that some people have that makes escaping poverty nearly impossible and makes remaining in the middle/upper classes to be a matter of having a really good support system. There’s a specific type of kid who is just spacey: when you talk to them, it’s as if they live in this completely different world where things just come at them. An assignment was due? They never even heard of it. There was an earthquake in Japan? When? Half the school is out with the flu? Really? It’s more than just a lack of interest in some particular set of details, or an obsessive tendency to only pay attention to a small set of interests, I mean a general lack of awareness of what’s going on around them. I imagine they move through a world of blurry shapes and colors, with the occasional solid object jumping out.
I certainly don’t think all poor people are like this, or that no middle/upper class people are. I do think that over time people like this probably either find a keeper or end up lower class.