Russell Haggar

Site Owner

 

The Culture of Poverty and the Cycle of Deprivation.

This theory is associated mainly with work of Oscar Lewis on the urban poor of Mexico and Puerto Rico but has also been adapted and applied  by others to industrial societies such as the UK.  Lewis wrote several detailed studies of poverty in the 1960s [La Vida[  ]; The Children of Sanchez [    ]].  His main findings have been carefully and succinctly summarised by Peter Townsend [Poverty in the United Kingdom 1979] and I rely very heavily on Townsend's summary here

Townsend uses the following quotations from Lewis' own work to illustrate his own description of the culture of poverty.

"Among the economic traits were unemployment and under-employment, low wages,  a miscellany of unskilled occupations, child labour, the absence of savings, a chronic shortage of cash, the absence of food reserves in the home, the pattern of frequent buying of small quantities of food many times a day as the need arises, the pawning of personal goods, borrowing from local money lenders at usurious rates of interest, spontaneous informal credit devices organized by neighbours and the use of second-hand clothing and furniture".

The social and psychological characteristics included " crowded quarters, a lack of privacy, gregariousness, a high incidence of alcoholism, frequent resort to violence in the settlement of quarrels, frequent use of physical violence in the training of children, wife beating, early initiation  into sex, free unions or consensual marriages, a relatively high incidence of the abandonment of mothers and children.....little ability to defer gratification or plan for the future, resignation, a belief in male superiority and  a corresponding martyr complex among women."

"Once it comes into existence it[the culture of poverty] tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation because of its effect on the children. By the time the slum children are 6 or 7 they have usually absorbed the basic values and attitudes of their subculture and are not psychologically geared to take full advantage of changing conditions or increased opportunities which may occur in their life time".

It is important to note however that according to Lewis not all poor people could be described as living in a culture of poverty. Thus , Lewis states that "my rough guess would be that only about 20% of the population below the poverty line...in the US have characteristics which would jusify classifying their way of life as that of a culture of poverty."

It is also necessary to analyse what causes the culture of poverty to arise in the first place and Townsend notes that Lewis recognised that the subculture of poverty is itself  "an adaptation and a reaction of the poor to their marginal position in a class-stratified, highly individuated, capitalistic society". Thus Lewis did recognise that the existence of poverty is ultimately explained by wider structural aspects of capitalistic society but nevertheless he gives far, far less attention  to these structural aspects than to the culture of poverty.

It is for this reason that Townsend makes 5 very important criticisms of Lewis' work.

1. "His method of research was extraordinarily interesting but individual-oriented and uncontrolled". Many ,[but not all] of his findings, were derived from studying a small and not necessarily representative sample of individuals form 1 extended family with limited consideration of more structural regional, national and international factors which also help to explain the existence of poverty.

2."There is conscious, if not unconscious bias". Lewis claims that the culture of poverty involves apathy, fatalism etc. but cannot actually demonstrate that this is the case. Townsend argues that "many of the criteria used to distinguish the culture of poverty were formulated in terms of middle class values" and that material, for example on sexuality, had been overemphasised " in order to shock middle class sensibilities or confirm middle class prejudices."

3. "A third problem was ambiguity." All of the criteria used to distinguish the culture of poverty were inexact. "The boundaries of the subculture were not specified, still less quantified".  Clearly it is no simple matter to determine and measure the degree of apathy or fatalism necessary to secure membership of the culture of poverty. so that Lewis could not determine with any certainty the proportion of poor people who were living in the culture of poverty.
4. " In so far as the thesis could be regarded as testable it was difficult to confirm." Other studies have shown that many poor people did not exhibit the characteristics  associated with the culture of poverty and even when they did this could be explained by factors such as malnutrition, overcrowding, lack of opportunity to participate in civic institutions and the general situational constraints of every day life. Even some of Lewis' own findings are self-contradictory so that, for example according to Townsend, " despite the disorganisation said to be characteristic of the subculture of poverty, parts of his work testified to the strength and cohesiveness of social relationships of slum areas."

5.Finally Townsend does not accept that the values of the poor are significantly different from those of other social groups. Even if the poor appear to be fatalistic and disorganised this does not prove that they support such attitudes and resultant behaviour. Townsend states, “The statistical prevalence of certain conditions or attitudes is a very different matter[from their acceptance] for this can have, indeed usually has, external causes."

Townsend has shown, therefore that Lewis' culture of poverty theory is open to important criticism and he points out finally that insofar as Lewis' mainly misguided approach to the explanation of poverty has been accepted by  USA policy makers this " may have helped, even if unwittingly , to direct interest in the USA in solutions to poverty away from economic and social reconstruction to individual training and character reforms, from costly redistributive policies to low cost social work and community psychiatry."

In the UK theory of the culture of poverty can be shown to be closely related to  a theory based around the idea of a cycle of disadvantage. This theory in turn attracted criticisms similar to those levelled against the culture of poverty theory. For example, in their study Cycles of Disadvantage, Michael Rutter and Nicola Madge were critical of the theory on the following grounds:

1. They argue that the attitudes of the poor are often similar to those prevailing in the rest of society. The poor see work as necessary for self-respect; they try hard to provide a happy home for their children, often making great personal sacrifices in the process; and they hope to see their children achieve the educational success that they themselves have not achieved. Therefore, if poverty is transmitted from generation to generation, the role of culture is limited.
   2. The theory downplays the importance of situational constraints which could result in the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Thus, poor people are likely to live in bad housing, which, coupled with a poor diet may lead to health problems; even if they want to, they may be unable to prepare their children for school as effectively as middle class parents can; and, since they need to concentrate their resources on day to day survival, they are unable to plan for the future.
   3. Rutter and Madge argue that the transmission of poverty is better explained by the situational constraints theory than by the culture of poverty theory. This is shown in the following quotations from their work. "Recent opinion has tended to stress the role of situational factors and even Lewis(1969) has reached the position that, in the long run, the self-perpetuating factors are relatively minor and unimportant as compared to the basic structure of the larger society" and "there is little documentation of any communities in this country (i.e. in the UK.) which might correspond with the description of a culture of poverty given by Lewis. The culture of poverty concept is inadequate for an analysis of British society."
   4. In any case, poverty is not always transmitted from generation to generation and approximately 50% of those born into poverty are likely to escape from it.

In summary, therefore critics have claimed that the culture of poverty and cycle of deprivation theories places too much emphasis on the dysfunctional socialisation processes of the poor and give little or no attention to the operation of the institutions of the wider society which help to generate the class, gender, ethnic and age disadvantages which result in poverty.

Poverty and Theories of the Underclass

However, despite the criticisms made above, some of the ideas of the culture of poverty theory reappear in the 1990s in Charles Murray’s version of the theory of the underclass. Murray has argued that in the USA. , a mainly Black and Hispanic underclass has developed comprising work shy young men who are often involved in drug-related crime and young, single mothers. Members of the underclass are said to have attitudes and values similar to those described in the culture of poverty theory and these are strengthened by the expansion of welfare benefits which, according to Murray, create a dependency culture which weakens self reliance and individual initiative. Also, according to Murray, an underclass is developing in the UK.
Murray’s theory has already been discussed but let us briefly reiterate that it has been heavily criticised on the following grounds:
1. There is good evidence to show that the attitudes of the poor are similar to those of other members of the society.
2.Murray underestimates the importance of structural factors which could result in the development of an underclass.
3. He blames the transmission of poverty on the inadequate socialisation processes carried out by single parents but young single parents often do not remain single for long so that the majority of children are likely to grow up in a two parent household and, even if they do not, single parents may still raise their children very effectively.
4. Some sociologists, even if they accept that an underclass exists , nevertheless argue that its existence is to be explained more in structural terms than in the cultural terms used by Murray. Others deny that an underclass exists in that the poor can more accurately be described as a particularly disadvantaged section of the working class. and that millions of individuals drift in and out of employment and in and out of poverty.

We turn finally to what may be described as more structural theories of poverty. The immediate causes of poverty have already been listed as low wages, unemployment, ill health, old age, living in a single parent family and living in a large family.

In structural theories of poverty:
1. Low wages are seen as very likely under capitalism because they are necessary in some industries to maintain profits.
2. Periodic unemployment is likely under capitalism. For example, in the case of the UK., unemployment was very high in the 1920s and 1930s and, again in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Very little unemployment arises because people are unwilling to work. It is rather because of the way in which capitalist economies operate, sufficient jobs are, quite simply, not available.
3. All of the groups subject to poverty are dependent upon Welfare State benefits of one kind or another but although the Welfare State certainly does help people n need, its resources are inadequate and its organisation is poor. Consequently, millions of people are living in relative poverty despite the existence of the Welfare State.
4. We may also, very importantly, distinguish between different variants of structural theories of poverty and, in doing so. link the analysis of poverty with the discussion of class, gender, "race", age and power inequalities in UK. society. Thus, in social democratic theories of poverty, it is implied that very significant elements of democratic pluralism exist in the UK. political system such that it should be possible to reduce poverty by reducing unemployment, introducing a more progressive system of taxation, a more generous system of Welfare benefits and a minimum wage. The equalisation of educational opportunity, also, can make a significant contribution to the reduction of poverty. However, in Marxist theories of poverty, poverty is inevitable under capitalism and mild social democratic reforms will be insufficient to remove poverty. What is necessary is the abolition of the capitalist system as a whole, no less. Finally, Feminist theories emphasise the extent to which it is women rather than men who are affected by poverty and point to the need for the ending of women’s exploitation, while in other theories, ethnic disadvantage is seen as a key factor in poverty, leading to proposals for greater ethnic equality.