Cultural Theories of Poverty

There are a wide range of factors that can create poverty in a given society, and such contributors are not limited to the political or economic arenas. There are sociological forces at work, many of which may have cultural underpinnings. This paper explores many of these cultural factors within the broader context of the causes of poverty. In doing so, the reader will glean a more comprehensive understanding of the multifarious elements that foster and maintain poverty in the post-industrial international community.

Keywords Classism; Equity; Poverty Line; Subculture; Upward Mobility

Cultural Theories of Poverty

Overview

In his 1935 State of the Union Address, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stressed the importance of helping Americans who had fallen into poverty and destitution. However, he also warned that aid to poor people whose plight remained largely unchanged over a long period of time could be dangerous for America. "[Continued] dependence on relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamental to the national fibre," he said. "To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit … It is in violation of the traditions of America" (Roosevelt, 2004).

FDR's comments speak to two types of sentiment that have long been prevalent in American society. The first is that those who fall upon hard times and into poverty must be given every resource necessary to reemerge above the poverty line. The second is that no one should be complacent about their impoverished status - for the United States government to support those who do not seek to better their situation is akin to perpetuating their complacency, which is counter to the American dream. In other words, these two ideas stress a central point: Poverty is not a status Americans should embrace - should they fall into hardship, they should work diligently to return to economic health.

While Roosevelt warned the people of the dangers of eschewing the American tradition of hard work and persistence and, instead, enabling the poor to remain poor, there are those who believe that poor communities have their own "culture," one with values somewhat different from the "American dream" ideals proffered above by FDR. Among those who espouse this school of thought was anthropologist Oscar Lewis. Lewis suggested that poor people had created for themselves a "culture of poverty" which became ingrained among impoverished peoples. In fact, he argued, this "culture" was so deeply rooted in poor communities that it would be handed down from generation to generation.

Understandably, such theories created a storm of controversy, but also raised a valid point: There are a wide range of factors that can create poverty in a given society, and such contributors are not limited to the political or economic arenas. There are sociological forces at work, many of which may have cultural underpinnings. This paper explores many of these cultural factors within the broader context of the causes of poverty. In doing so, the reader will glean a more comprehensive understanding of the multifarious elements that foster and maintain poverty in the post-industrial international community.

What is Poverty?

Billions of people around the globe live in poverty, and yet there is no single, universally accepted definition of what this individual status is. There is a wide range of definitions, to be sure; encompassing the political, economic and sociological arenas. Indeed, painting a definitive picture of poverty is at best an arbitrary undertaking.

According to 2010 World Bank estimates, 21 percent of people in the developing world live below $1.25 a day. This number is down 43 percent from 1990 and 52 percent in 1981.

Arguably, the most popular of the definitions of poverty is along economic lines. Nations, as well as the international community, have largely embraced the establishment of an absolute "line" to distinguish a system's impoverished population. Those who earn less than about one US dollar (a determination based on the year in which the threshold was established - 1993) are considered "below the poverty line."

Then again, such rigid parameters are, as many scholars contend, flawed. Even the $1 US figure is subject to controversy. In fact, given the varying size of individual national economies, even those who introduced the $1/day concept to the World Bank have largely sought to update or replace it with a more complex (and realistic) figure that includes the economies of the nations in which incidences of poverty are more prevalent (The Economist, 2008).

In fact, there are a number of contributors to poverty rates, and not all are manifest in income levels. In some cases, the economy under which a society operates fails to provide development opportunities for the people. In other situations, political leadership does not provide the resources and institutions that enable the people to avoid falling in hardship.

In another arena, there are cultural elements that can contribute to poverty. In many cases, poverty is increased and the policy responses designed to mitigate the issue falls far short over the long-term, due in no small part not to limits in income but in limited appeal to certain social groups with distinct cultures and traditions. This paper will next turn to some examples of the theoretical causes of poverty in the international community.

Culture & Poverty

In a 2007 study, a social service group experienced a number of failures in attempting to mitigate poverty in one community. Staff complained about the fact that clients rejected their efforts in strong fashion. Some felt insulted at the assumption that poverty and racial issues could be generalized across countries and cultures. Other staff members felt that they were not properly trained on the cultural and traditional norms of the region in which they would work (Vu & Austin, 2007).

It is the myriad of international, national and sub-national social groups and cultures, and the failure of service providers to appreciate the number and profile of such groups, that have led to situations such as those described above. Social service groups often fail to mitigate poverty because they do not appreciate the cultural forces that created it within the system. One researcher observes that many anti-poverty programs fail because the real experts on how to address the issue in a given system are the poor themselves. The study continued to note that some systems have seen small successes by enabling the people to help grow and appreciate the advances they had just taken part in (Xiaoyun & Remenyi, 2008).

The Role of the Family Unit

Such a statement finds particular veracity in studying the relationship between poverty and the family. The family unit is arguably the most important entity in any given culture. Social norms, traditions, religious ideals and other cultural elements are shared among parents, siblings and countless generations of relatives. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that many sociologists believe that life in poverty may also be one of the cultural elements imbued in the family structure.

This theory suggests that generations of individuals who had previously been subjected to impoverishment have a certain perspective of the world that is based on a life of poverty. Some of these values and traditions may be positive in nature, such as Roosevelt's espousal of an American tradition of individual effort to succeed without external help. Then again, many of those in whom this "bootstraps" ideal is ingrained are those who see the benefits of escaping poverty, either by examples set by close relatives or perceived role models. Others may have at one time in their lives lived above the poverty line and, as a result, aspire to return to that status.

On the other side of the coin are those who have no such inspiration. For many, poverty is all they may know simply because such a life is all that they have ever seen and experienced. The most glaring examples of such a "heritage" are seen in such places as sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, but such a lifestyle exists in virtually every region on Earth, including rural and urban centers in many wealthy nations. Only when impoverished families are exposed to the elements and resources that may help facilitate upward mobility do some break away from the life to which they have become complacent.

In a recent study in the Philippines, two groups of Filipinos raised in poverty demonstrated identical perspectives on their status - they had never seen their basic needs met, had negative emotions about their way of life and attributed their respective states of poverty to family heritage. One of these groups did experience upward mobility, however. This elevation occurred when the family was exposed to services, educational resources and other elements that provide a path towards greater wealth than that to which they were accustomed. By breaking these individuals away from their family "tradition" of poverty, this group was able to move up in socioeconomic class, while the second group, unexposed to such elements, remained mired in poverty; complacent in the only life they knew (Tuason, 2008).

Theorists of Cultural Poverty

The idea that families help perpetuate their own state of poverty leads to a more general theory of poverty as a culture in and of itself. As stated earlier, Oscar Lewis offered the view that poverty is handed down from generation to generation as a "culture of poverty." He wrote that once this culture is introduced, it tends to perpetuate itself. "By the time slum children are six or seven, they usually have absorbed the basic attitudes and values of their subculture," he said. "Thereafter they are psychologically unready to take full advantage of changing conditions or improving opportunities that may develop in their lifetime" (Bradshaw, 2006).

Lewis was not alone in his view that poverty had its roots in a deeply embedded "culture" of impoverishment. In 1984, Charles Murray echoed this sentiment, but expounded on its causes. In fact, Murray asserted a rather daring point - responsibility for the continuation of poverty in the United States despite the 1960s "war on poverty" rested squarely on the shoulders of the system that was intent on defeating it.

Murray's theory centered on the fact that attitudes (especially among upper-class elites) about poverty in the United States changed in the 1960s. No longer, he argued, was poverty being considered the result of individual vice or misstep. Rather, liberal-minded activists believed that the system had failed a growing segment of the population, keeping it mired in poverty with little opportunity to reemerge. With regard to the large number of blacks below the poverty line, Murray contended, elites viewed this disparity as the product of white racism. The result, Murray said, was that US society sought to spend exorbitant sums of money to help the poor. This money, coupled with an educational system that "dumbed down" school curricula to help poor citizens, served not to help poor citizens out of squalor but rather keep them firmly entrenched in it (Magnet, 2005).

Understandably, the Lewis's theory of a culture of poverty, as well as Murray's notion that state-sponsored relief policies did little more than help entrenched poverty maintain itself and generated considerable backlash primarily from liberal-minded critics. Certainly, scholars did find holes in such theories. For example, the culture of poverty theory suggests that poverty exists as the result of deviance in behavior from mainstream society but critics have repeatedly doubted this claim, suggesting that most poor people share the same values as those of upper classes (Long, 2007). Nevertheless, many policymakers have begun to take such views seriously.

Alternatives to the Cultural Poverty Theory

As mentioned earlier, there are countless definitions of poverty. In a similar vein, there is a myriad of theories about the causes of impoverishment. Sociologists proceed from two general theoretical approaches to this mystery. The first of these is the failure of the individual to advance upward in society.

Within this school of thought is the conclusion that the system has not failed an individual, but rather that the individual, for a number of reasons, fails to take advantage of the resources available for him or her to avoid falling below the poverty line. How an individual falls into poverty has a number of explanations - poor financial decisions, committing crime, becoming addicted to drugs, mental illness or emigrating to a wealthier country from a less developed country. However, under this theoretical framework, the perpetuation of poverty is also borne of a culture, although it is something of a departure from the "culture of poverty" theory espoused by Lewis and Murray. Under this model of "classism," the liable "culture" views those who live in poverty in an inequitable fashion, a perspective that is in turn ingrained into the individual.

Classism within the Education System

One study of the American public education system sees classism based on a number of myths that stem largely from the "culture of poverty" framework. Among these misconceptions about poor people are the beliefs that these individuals lack motivation or a work ethic and as a result, so do their children. Also, a belief among higher classes is that poor people are inattentive and non-nurturing to their children, that they cannot speak English and that they are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, which further keeps them mired in poverty. These myths, founded in the Lewis and Murray ideal, lend to the continuation of poverty and the failure of schools to either help students elevate out of their lower-class status or give them the tools to extricate themselves, according to the study's author. He continues, saying:

The myth of a "culture of poverty" distracts us from a dangerous culture that does exist - the culture of classism. This culture continues to harden in our schools today. It leads the most well-intentioned of us … into low expectations for low-income students. It makes teachers fear their most powerless pupils. And, worst of all, it diverts attention from what people in poverty do have in common: inequitable access to basic human rights (Gorski, 2008).

The central imperative that results of the classist point of view is not that the system must spend more to remove individuals from their impoverished state. Rather, it is that the system must have the resources available for all classes to utilize for their betterment. In a society in which privilege creates choices for all, classists maintain, the society must enable an equitable set of benefits for all social groups (Koepke, 2007).

Poverty Amidst Certain Social Groups

Controversy over the theories of Lewis and Murray has persisted, even though many believe that they are at the least fundamentally intriguing. Still, although the perpetuation of poverty may be evident in these theories, the fundamental causes of poverty among certain social and racial groups are not as clear. Some theories regarding the plight of minority groups suggest that there may in fact be a collective grouping of factors that have contributed to poverty at its advent and perpetuated it during the course of history.

In one study of African Americans, for example, researchers employed a multi-level approach, combining individual-level data with contextual information from community-based organizations. The author concludes that young, poor black people face a number of layers of disadvantages, many of which have been described in this paper. On one level, instability at the family level tends to embed in young African Americans a sense that their poverty will undoubtedly continue, for it has persisted throughout family history. On another level is the community and neighborhoods, which have largely failed to present avenues and resources that enable black men and women to escape the mindset of the perpetuity of poverty suggested to them by the family. Such individual and community issues, the study concludes, contribute heavily to continued social disparity and the poverty that is endemic to it (Kirk, 2008).

Similar to the theory of classism, the distinctive element of this theory is not that society must overcompensate to correct the inequities that perpetuate poverty. Rather, it is to stress that there are inequities in the current system, and that in situations where resources are not distributed in an equitable fashion (more specifically, the resources available to wealthier individuals are also available for the less wealthy), poverty is likely to be maintained.

Conclusion

Poverty has many faces and definitions, but the most basic of these is a lack of the resources to live a comfortable life in society. The causes of poverty are equally elusive, and lack universally accepted definition due to the wide range of schools of thought on the subject.

For millennia, the commonly accepted view of poverty was that it was the result of individual missteps - it was the responsibility of the individual to return to prosperity. Of course, many individuals did not seek a remedy, falling further into personal disrepair - drugs, crime, limited education and conditions of abject squalor were part of their lives and although they had the choice to better themselves, for reasons all their own, they failed to take advantage of a system designed to help those who seek to help themselves.

In the 1960s, however, the view among American leadership was that those who had fallen behind the veil of poverty were the products of a system that had failed to meet their needs. The necessary response, in the minds of adherents to this school of thought, was for the government to spend the funds necessary to improve the lives of poor members of the community.

This "liberal" approach to understanding poverty (and thereby formulating a policy response) led to the controversial theory about a "culture of poverty." Under this model, the poor are seen as part of an ingrained subculture, knowing only the impoverished way of life. For adherents to this mode of thought, such as Oscar Lewis and Charles Murray, any form of state assistance only perpetuated poverty by feeding a segment of the population that chose not to feed itself.

As this paper has demonstrated, there is a great deal of data to support many of the theories surrounding the links between culture and poverty. Such data has led to the "war on poverty" during the administration of Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, and it has led to the comprehensive reform of the US welfare system in the mid-1990s. Although poverty will almost certainly continue as the world enters the post-industrial era, it remains to see if any these theories on the substance of poverty will prevail, or if new data will support other theories.

Terms & Concepts

Classism: Sociological theory that claims the interaction of hierarchical social strata perpetuates poverty among lower classes.

Equity: Even distribution of social services and resources.

Poverty Line: Formula-derived threshold determining a system's poor population.

Subculture: Distinct social group demonstrating inherent values and traditions within a larger culture.

Upward Mobility: Social movement from a lower class to a higher class.

Bibliography

Bradshaw, T. K. (2006). Theories of poverty and anti-poverty programs in community development. Rural Poverty Research Center Working Papers. Retrieved August 6, 2008, from www.igloo.org/eckerlecurwood/.download/theories

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Griffin, R. (2011). "Unfit Mothers": The Effect of the Culture of Poverty on Welfare Reform. Conference Papers -- American Sociological Association, 971. Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text:http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=85658499&site=ehost-live

Kirk, D. S. (2008). The neighborhood context of racial and ethnic disparities in arrest. Demography, 45 , 55-77. Retrieved August 6, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=28627035&site=ehost-live

Koepke, D. J. (2007). Race, class, poverty, and capitalism. Race, Gender and Class, 14 (3/4), 189-205. Retrieved August 7, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=31792793&site=ehost-live

Laakso, J. (2013). Flawed Policy Assumptions and HOPE VI. Journal Of Poverty, 17, 29-46. doi:10.1080/10875549.2012.748000 Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text:http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=84918178&site=ehost-live

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Sweeney, K. A. (2012). The Culture of Poverty and Adoption: Adoptive Parent Views of Birth Families. Michigan Family Review, 16, 22-37. Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text:http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=77563011&site=ehost-live

Tuason, M. T. G. (2008). Those who were born poor. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 55 , 158-171. Retrieved August 6, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=31712236&site=ehost-live

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Vu, C. M. & Austin, M. J. (2007). The explosive nature of the culture of poverty. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 16 (1/2), 167-172. Retrieved August 5, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=30035675&site=ehost-live

Xiaoyun, L. & Remenyi, J. Making poverty mapping and monitoring participatory. Development in Practice, 18 (4/5), 599-610. Retrieved August 5, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=33158126&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Garrity, R. (2005). Classism: Why should we care? Off our Backs, 35 (1/2), 22-23.

Gross, D. (2008). Today's "Culture of Poverty." Newsweek, 151 , 18. Retrieved August 8, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=31506770&site=ehost-live

Lehning, A. J. (2007). Political science perspectives on poverty. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 16 (1/2), 87-103. Retrieved August 8, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=30035671&site=ehost-live

Long, C. (2006). Understanding poverty. NEA Today, 24 , 16. Retrieved August 8, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=20357053&site=ehost-live

Morely, J. (1988). The new anti-poverty debate. Nation, 246 , 196-198. Retrieved August 8, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=8800005641&site=ehost-live

O'Connor, B. (2001). The intellectual origins of "welfare dependency." Australian Journal of Social Issues, 36 , 221-236. Retrieved August 8, 20, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5382168&site=ehost-live

Worden, S. (2011). At Home On the Street: People, Poverty, and a Hidden Culture of Homelessness. Social Forces, 89, 1088-1091. Retrieved October 24, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text:http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=59733256&site=ehost-live