According to Buddhism - Yes. This is all the Law of Kamma. People who are rich deserve to be rich by something they did in their past life, people who are poor deserve to be poor because of something they did in their past life. Now this is not something we can prove, it is a theoretical position but all based in the Law of Kamma. According to Buddhism we get exactly what we deserve when we were born. Now even if a person is born into poor conditions though there can be other Kammic results that give them something beneficial.
One of our assistants we have at Wat Kow Tahm for quite a few years now was born in East Germany, actually in East Berlin. He grew up, couldn't see many of his relatives, they were in West Berlin. He was 13 years old when the wall came down. So he was born in conditions that were not very favorable compared to some of the other assistants that we have, who were born in Australia, West Germany, America, whatever, with better conditions, better situation growing up. But because this one assistant who was born into more of a poor condition, because he had very good Kamma in other ways, he has basically the same opportunity as the other assistants have now. As an adult, as an assistant at Wat Kow Tahm, his opportunity is equal to the others. Now on a different level he has an advantage over some of the richer assistants, because he grew up in harder conditions. And because of that he experienced more Dukkha growing up, and this gives him a different background towards the practice, which compared to many other assistants is actually a favorable condition. So when we look at what we were born into, or what anyone is born into, maybe it is not that favorable at that time, but it will depend on how much good Kamma we have done in other areas, as to whether as time goes by things become better for us.
Going back to Christopher Reeve I mentioned earlier, for those of you who don't know, he was a very popular actor, played Superman and such. He was very rich, wealthy, had a wife, had a family, yet he became a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down by falling off a horse, all that good Kamma for forty odd years, now suddenly he had extremely bad Kamma. Buddhism would say something is his past life made him deserve that.
Now for a lot of people who become quadriplegic, their life ends. They become full of self-pity, a lot of them will want to commit suicide, he himself wanted to do it, too, right after the accident. But no, he had good friends, in particular his wife, who told him she still loved him even though his body was paralyzed and encouraged him to live. Due to her support he did, and used his fame to do a lot of good, even though he was paralyzed from the neck down, for organizations especially in regard to paralyzed people, raised more money in the Congress in the United States and other things. So actually in his poor position of being paralyzed, he did more good Kamma than he had done in his rich position of the 40 years before that. So it is in our reactions, always in our reactions, how we are going to react to life's difficult situations, and in those reactions can we do more good Kamma.