Attitudes on Poverty

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Recommended: the contributory factors of poverty

Poverty is an issue affecting the whole globe, and the United States is no exception. Reading, Pennsylvania, the site of our study, has the largest share of its residents living in poverty in the United States according the Census Bureau data (Tavernise 2011). With poverty clearly an issue to its inhabitants, we are going to investigate locals’ attitudes towards poverty. Items that affect peoples’ opinions on poverty include local context, political views, religion and education, race, gender, and family structure.

LOCAL CONTEXT

In his study Daniel Hopkins (2009) looked at the effect local context had on Americans’ portrayals of poverty. He focused on two major views of poverty: poverty in structural terms and poverty in individualistic terms. Poverty in structural terms is viewed as factors that are beyond the control of the person, such as shortage of jobs or part time and low wage jobs. Poverty in individualistic terms is viewed as failing of the poor themselves, such as a lack of motivation, drug abuse, or the poor are not doing enough to get out of poverty. For his research, he looked at two nationally representative surveys, the 2001 Poverty in America Survey (PIAS) and the 2000 General Social Survey (GCS). His results showed that people living in areas with a large majority of the poor being white are less likely to attribute poverty to the individuals themselves and more likely to look in structural terms (Hopkins 2009). This is in agreement with past research that showed that Americans view poverty in racial terms and see poverty as a situation the poor brings upon themselves. He also found that strong Republican areas view poverty more in individualistic than structural terms (Hopkins 2009).

In the study ...

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...Kathryn and Kissane, Rebecca Joyce. 2010. “Poverty and the American Family: A decade

in review.” Journal of Marriage and Family 72(3):460-79.

Hopkins, Daniel J. 2009. “Partisan Reinforcement and the Poor: The Impact of Context on

Explanations for Poverty.” Social Science Quarterly 90(3):744-64.

Hunt, Matthew O. 2004. “Race/Ethnicity and Beliefs about Wealth and Poverty.” Social Science

Quarterly 85(3):827-53.

Prokos, Anastasia H. and Jennifer Reid Keene. 2010. “Poverty Among Cohabiting Gay and

Lesbian, and Married and Cohabiting Heterosexual Families.” Journal of Family Issues

31(7):934-59.

Robinson, James W. 2009. “American Poverty Cause Beliefs and Structured Inequality

Legitimation.” Sociological Spectrum 29:489-518.

Tavernise, Sabrina. 2011. “Reading, Pa., Knew It Was Poor. Now It Knows Just How

Poor.” The New York Times, September 26.

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