Personality and economic background

Generally you can notice two types of people with regard to their attitude to money. There are people who are very generous and people who are very stingy or miserly. It is a very interesting phenomenon worth studying. You can find these two categories of people both in the affluent families and poverty ridden families. You can even call it the 'problems of plenty and problems of scanty'.

Some people, who are born and brought up in the poorest conditions, and who have faced and suffered all kinds of adversities in life, becoming very generous personalities later in their life when their fortunes look up. Mostly, they have a feeling that others should not have to face the difficulties they themselves experienced. You can take the examples many well known philanthropists who keep on helping others even though their own desires are not completely fulfulled. They find gratification in helping others and most often they are obsessed with this feeling throughout their life. I need not have to name anybody here because, you find such people everywhere around you doing their yeoman service in their own unique way. Some may come to limelight while others may not. What I am concerned about is their attitude.

You also see persons who are extremely stingy and miserly when they become rich and affluent later in the life. Mostly, it appears they have nourished a sense of insecurity all through their childhood. The result of that insecurity is so intense in them that they feel threatened as if they will be thrown back into that unhappy past; and in order to save themselves from that painful past, they do not want to part with their wealth. Their greed can reach the level of insatiation sometimes. They keep on adding to their wealth by all possible means. But this nouveau riche exhibit the qualities where their childhood haunts them. You can observe them being either lonely, wily, hypocratic, suspicious or insecure deep in the core of their personality.

The same phenomenon can be observed in the people born with the silver spoon in their mouth.. You have generous, empathetic and kind souls who give away everything they have, again for the sense of that gratification. You might have heard stories of many such people who later become paupers out of their own virtues. You can see equally stingy people who would not part with even one penny even though they can afford the moon. They are utterly miserly. George Orwell has written a beautiful essay on one such miserly man he came across. It is an extreme case of psychological perversity. But these people do not enjoy the life themselves nor allow others.

My question is, what do you attribute such personalities to? Is it a psychological phenomenon or genetic phenomenon?