Explaining Poverty
Why are poor people poor? Is it because they are born into poverty, or because they
don’t work hard enough to get themselves out of it, or because they have some physi-
cal, intellectual, or emotional problem that prevents them from getting out?
Personal Initiative.One common explanation is that people are poor because they
lack something—initiative, drive, ambition, discipline. A question in the General
Social Survey asks, “Differences in social standing between people are acceptable
because they basically reflect what people made out of the opportunities they had”
and 74 percent of respondents agreed. They were expressing a long-standing belief
that people are poor because they are unmotivated and lazy. They do not try hard
enough. They don’t want to work. While we often excuse widows, orphans, children,
and the handicapped—the “deserving poor”—who can’t help it (Katz, 1990), most
Americans believe that the vast majority of poor people are “undeserving” poor.
Sociologists, however, understand poverty differently—as a structural problem,
not a personal failing. In fact, it’s often the other way around: People are unmotivated
and lack ambition because they are poor, not poor because they lack ambition. No
matter how hard they try and how motivated they are, the cards are so heavily stacked
against them that they eventually give up—as would any sensible person. In Nickel
and Dimed(2001), renowned journalist Barbara Ehrenreich tried an experiment: to
live on minimum wage for a year. “Disguised” as a poor person, she applied for and
received jobs as a waitress in Florida, a maid in Maine, and a Wal-Mart employee in
Minnesota. At first she worried that she would not be able to maintain the ruse: Surely
co-workers would notice her superior intelligence and competence and realize that she
wasn’t “one of them,” or else the boss would notice and fast-track her into a mana-
gerial position. But neither happened. She was no smarter and lesscompetent than any-
one else in minimum wage jobs. Back home as a renowned journalist, she had to
conclude that her privileged lifestyle had a little to do with her drive, ambition, intel-
ligence, and talent, and a lot to do with her social location. Anthropologist Katherine
Newman found that poor people actually work harder than wealthy people—often in
two demeaning, difficult, and exhausting dead-end jobs (Newman, 1999).
The Culture of Poverty.In 1965, sociologist Oscar Lewis introduced the influential
culture of povertythesis (Lewis, 1965) that argued that poverty is not a result of
individual inadequacies but of larger social and cultural factors. Poor children are
socialized into believing that they have nothing to strive for, that there is no point in
working to improve their conditions. As adults, they are resigned to a life of
poverty, and they socialize their children the same way. Therefore poverty is
transmitted from one generation to another.
This notion of resignation has often been challenged. For example, the General
Social Survey states: “America has an open society. What one achieves in life no longer
depends on one’s family background, but on the abilities one has and the education
one acquires,” and 76 percent of lower-class respondents agree, only a little less than
the working-class (84 percent), middle class (87 percent), or upper class (80 percent).
Certainly these percentages don’t indicate any culture of complacency.
Structures of Inequality.Today sociologists know that poverty results from
nationwide and worldwide factors that no one individual has any control over, such
as economic changes, globalization, racism, and government policies (the minimum
wage, Social Security, publicly funded or subsidized health care and day care, and
other antipoverty initiatives). Today we also understand that though people living
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