Culture of Poverty

• The underlying idea is that the lifestyle of the poor differs in many respects from that of the non-poor in society. Similarities have been found in this poverty lifestyle even across different societies. This leads to the development of a subculture, with its own norms and values, that is transmitted from one generation to the next.
• Oscar Lewis, an American anthropologist, developed the culture of poverty concept out of his fieldwork in Mexico and Puerto Rico in the late 1950s. According to Lewis, the culture of poverty has the following three levels: the individual level, the family and the community.
• At the individual level, the poor tend to experience:

  • feelings of marginalization, helplessness and inferiority;

  • a sense of resignation and fatalism;

  • the desire for immediate gratification; that is, the poor tend to be unable to delay gratification.
• At the family level, there exist:

  • free unions or consensual marriages;

  • high divorce rates;

  • a notable number of female-headed households.
• At the community level, the poor usually demonstrate the following:

  • People normally become fatalistic, leading to minimal effective participation and integration in the major institutions.

  • There is non-membership in trade unions and other similar organizations.

  • Little use is made of banks, museums, hospitals and other such institutions.
• Lewis concludes that the culture of poverty ‘encourages’ poverty since these aforementioned characteristics act as vehicles to ensure the perpetuation of poverty.