Culture of Poverty

Poverty and the Culture of Poverty

Lewis recognized that there are degrees of poverty and many kinds of poor people. Not all societies have a culture of poverty. Lewis argued that a culture of poverty is more likely in societies with a certain set of conditions. First, these societies have a cash economy, wage labor, and production for profit. Second, they have a persistently high rate of unemployment and underemployment for unskilled labor. Third, there is the presence of low wages. Fourth, these societies fail to provide social, political, and economic organization [Page 650]either on a voluntary basis or by government imposition for the low-income population. Fifth, there exists a bilateral kinship system rather than a unilateral one. In a unilateral kinship system, one traces descent either through males or through females. In a bilateral system, one traces descent through males and females without emphasis on either line. Sixth, the values of the dominant class stress the accumulation of wealth and property, the possibility of upward mobility, and thrift, and they explain low economic status as the result of personal inadequacy or inferiority.

The way of life that develops among some of the poor under these conditions constitutes the culture of poverty. Lewis described this way of life in terms of some 70 interrelated social, economic, and psychological traits. These traits represent a reaction of the poor to their marginal position in a class-stratified, highly individuated, capitalistic society. They represent an effort by the poor to cope with feelings of hopelessness and despair that develop from the recognition of the improbability of achieving success in the larger society. The number of traits and the relationship between them could vary from society to society.

Lewis theorized that the culture of poverty is not only a present adaptation to a set of objective conditions of the larger society. Rather, once it comes into existence, it tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation because of its effect on children. For example, Lewis argued that by the time slum children are age 6 or 7,they have usually absorbed the basic values and attitudes of this culture of poverty and are not psychologically geared to take full advantage of increased opportunities that occur in their lifetime.

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