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Culture of poverty

The "culture of poverty" is a sociological concept that describes the values, beliefs, and lifestyles often found among individuals living in economic deprivation. It highlights how poverty creates a distinct environment that influences the behaviors and attitudes of its residents, particularly within marginalized communities, including many minorities and immigrants. This culture is shaped by factors such as unemployment, poor education, isolation, and systemic discrimination, resulting in a cycle that makes it difficult for individuals to escape poverty.

Oscar Lewis, a prominent anthropologist, argued that children in these environments inherit survival strategies that may hinder their chances of upward mobility, such as a disdain for education and a tendency toward self-indulgent behaviors. Overcoming poverty, therefore, requires not only individual effort but also significant changes in environmental conditions, including improvements in education and job opportunities.

While traditional views often wrongly link poverty to individual failings, modern scholarship recognizes the complex interplay between systemic issues and poverty. The culture of poverty thesis has evolved to emphasize the need for comprehensive approaches addressing educational disparities, employment discrimination, and community support to foster a more equitable society. Understanding this dynamic is essential for appreciating the challenges faced by those in impoverished circumstances and the broader societal implications.

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SIGNIFICANCE: The term “culture of poverty” has been used in sociological theory to describe the values, principles, and lifestyles associated with people living at the lowest economic levels of society. Because many minorities and immigrants grow up in a culture of poverty, it has profound implications for intergroup relations.

“Culture of poverty” is a term that refers to the pattern of life, set of beliefs, and typical behavior found among people who live in an environment dominated by economic deprivation. Culture is the way in which people live their lives and includes all the habits learned by an individual from other members of the community. In its broadest sense, a culture contains the essential information one needs to live in a given environment. Because the environment found in impoverished communities is built upon deprivation, isolation, discrimination, poor education, lack of jobs, crime, drugs, alcohol abuse, and government assistance dependence, these negative forces shape the attitudes, expectations, and behavior of residents.

Oscar Lewis, an American anthropologist famous for his description of the effects of poverty on human lives in La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York (1966), believed that the values children learn from their parents about how to survive in such desperate circumstances make them less able to move out of poverty. Lewis suggested that only a violent revolution overturning capitalist society would enable low-income individuals to find dignity and equality. Working within the system would not solve any problems because the values low-income people learn include hatred for education (which rarely helps to get a person out of the slums), self-indulgence (since alcohol and drugs offer a quick way out of misery), and unwillingness to save or sacrifice for the future well-being of one’s self or family (since the future offers little hope for improving one’s economic circumstances). None of these values leads to educational or occupational advancement. The culture learned by low-income individuals works against their ever getting out of poverty. For things to change, according to Lewis, the environmental conditions need to change.

Defining Poverty

Poverty takes many forms: social poverty, which is defined as economic inequality, or the lack of means to provide a minimally adequate standard of living; pauperism, a word that signifies an inability of individuals to take care of themselves; and voluntary poverty, which includes those who for religious and philosophical reasons give up material possessions to pursue prayer, meditation, or art. In the United States, most low-income individuals fall into the first two categories, including individuals with a lack of advanced skills, limited education, and a large number of children who are disproportionately disadvantaged by their parents’ low income. The US government has defined forty-eight different poverty thresholds for all contiguous states, as well as for Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia, based on household size (ranging from one person to nine or more) and number of related children under eighteen years old (ranging from none to eight or more).

Sources of Poverty

Race is not a cause of poverty, but the American tradition of racial segregation and discrimination has guaranteed that a large proportion of African Americans live below the poverty line. According to the culture of poverty theory, the major causes of poverty in the United States include chronic unemployment resulting from low levels of education and lack of skills; low wages in entry-level occupations, as well as in agricultural labor; old age; and catastrophes such as floods, fires, or large medical bills.

Historically, many people viewed poverty as a sign of wickedness and moral degeneracy, assuming that people who live below the poverty line are lazy and corrupt. These attitudes must be faced and absorbed into a person’s consciousness every day, and they only increase a sense of frustration and hopelessness. In a society that exalts the work ethic, such as the United States, not working becomes a sign of individual worthlessness and insignificance. This attitude represents one of the most devastating nonmaterial effects of being a low-income American.

According to the culture-of-poverty thesis, ending employment discrimination, raising wages, and increasing employment opportunities through job-training programs would all help reduce poverty. However, the attitudes of low-income individuals would change only very slowly because a whole way of life would need to be transformed. Education is the key to changing attitudes, especially by reducing the sense of despair frequently experienced by low-income individuals. Yet, dropout rates are disproportionately high in underprivileged districts, and many impoverished adults are functionally illiterate. Thus, a major change in educational outcomes would be required before schools could be accepted as a way out of poverty.

In 1987, University of Chicago sociologist William J. Wilson observed that many African Americans lived in neighborhoods with high concentrations of people in similarly desperate economic circumstances, with average incomes of less than $5,000 a year. Low-income Black individuals, especially, tended to live in areas surrounded by other low-income Black households with little meaningful exposure to individuals with more secure economic futures. These are the truly disadvantaged members of American society, the people who feel most cut off from the American mainstream, and the people most influenced by the culture of poverty.

In the twenty-first century, scholars and poverty experts assert that the theory of the culture of poverty was misguided and failed to consider all aspects of society in its evaluation of low-income individuals. Modern sociologists understand the problems that systemic racism has created in American society and reject the idea that individuals who live below the poverty line are any less driven, capable, or upstanding than individuals with excessive wealth. Differences in income and the cause of poverty are not easily defined with a simple cause, but rather, a result of myriad societal, political, and individual issues that should be addressed with respect.

Tough Environments

In underprivileged and underserved neighborhoods, cultural patterns emerge that promote survival amid dangerous and violent conditions. Various measures of social disintegration, including crime rates, murder rates, divorce, child abuse, domestic violence, and levels of drug addiction, alcoholism, mental health conditions, and hypertension, are far higher in inner cities than in any other part of the United States. Survival in these circumstances requires a tough spirit and a distrust of others. Because residents of these neighborhoods usually do not receive adequate city services, such as police protection, distrust of the government grows, leading to increased levels of hopelessness and helplessness. Not even the schools, historically the institutions most used by marginalized groups as the path to success, typically offer the type of skills and training necessary to change one’s life. The dream of college often seems very distant to people without enough money to buy food.

The goals of individuals of all socioeconomic classes may be similar—better jobs, improved educational opportunities, and a more pleasant future for their children—but many individuals who grow up in low-income households lack hope that these dreams can come true. In many impoverished and racially segregated neighborhoods, crime, usually involving drug sales, offers a route to material success. In some cases, these types of life choices may feel like the only option. Government assistance payments, whether through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or other aid programs, are another source of survival for disadvantaged individuals, although the welfare reforms of the late 1990s significantly curtailed these resources as long-term options. Such help, inadequate as it usually is, tends to reduce self-respect, as many consider it a sign of personal weakness to receive government assistance.


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