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Are people rich or poor depending upon how hard they work?

Is your question: Is there a relationship between financial success and ambition?

Sometimes, but not necessarily. Frequently, hard work does result in financial success. However, sometimes a person can work very hard, but other factors, such as illness or natural disaster, can wipe out their wealth. Sometimes a person can work very hard, but the kind of work he or she does is not compensated at a high rate of pay. And sometimes people don't work at all, but enjoy financial success because their wealth is inherited from others.

In reply to #2: yes. the question is base in the book "rich dad poor dad"

..People can gain financial means not only by hard work ..corruption is also a great factor where a person can acquire wealth

Hard work, as much as the American dream would like us to believe, does not always end in financial success. Many blue - collar workers and laborers work harder than any other profession, but I certainly do not see these people making millions of dollars.  In terms of professional careers, teachers work very hard, with very little pay and, in some places, even less respect than other jobs.

Hear, hear #6!

Money is only one of the rewards for work.  At least some of the low-paying jobs, such as teaching, offer the satisfaction of making a difference in the world.  Of course, that doesn't mean teachers shouldn't be paid better!

Another factor that hasn't been mentioned is discrimination.  Historically, women and people of color have had fewer opportunities to get high-paying jobs and have been paid less than white men for the same work.

Definitely, there is significant correlation between amount of hard work and earnings. However, there are many other factors that determine the wealth or financial status of a person.

Even if we assumed a direct relationship between hard work and earnings, the wealth of a person will not be proportional to earnings. This is for the one simple reason that the wealth depends not only on what you earn, but also on what you spend and save. Also there are many other sources of wealth like inheritance, and winning a big sweep-stake.

In practice, the earning itself is not directly related to hard work. Some of the important factors that influence earnings include the following.

1. Level of education, skill, and other job related attributes of a person. A related factor is the ability to "work smarter rather than harder".
2. Market conditions. Some types of jobs fetch higher returns than others. Bill Gate, in his book Business @ the Speed of Thought, explains how his skill in computer programming would not have been of much help to him a few centuries ago.
3. Opportunity: Not all people with same skills get equal opportunities to work hard and to develop their skills and capabilities. Take the example of the children who acted in the award Academy Award winning movie "Slumdog Millionaire". Some children living in extreme poverty in slums of Mumbai, who got opportunity to act in the film improved their financial resources substantially. But can we be sure that there were no other children more skilled for the job or more hard working?
4. Luck. Take the case of farmers all over the world. The yield they get from their farms are dependent heavily on naturl factors like rainfall. Also the market price of farm products fluctuate heavily. As a result income of farmers fluctuates heavily from year to year.
5. Economic conditions: General income levels of people rise and fall in line with changes in general economic conditions. IN times of recession people loose jobs and are forced to accept employment on lower wager. IN times of economic boom the wages tend to rise. The economic conditions also explain the wide disparity in incomes levels of different countries.

All these factors combine to determine the earnings of individuals. No single factor will lead to prosparity, at the same time total absence of any one factor will mean certain problem.

I can explain this reasoning by a simple equation taking only two factors "Effort" and "Luck".

      Wealth = Effort X Luck

One implication of this equation is that though hard work will not guarantee high earnings, it will definitely improve the probabilities of high earnings.