Culture of Poverty in America: Causes and Education

Introduction

What cultural dynamics contribute to or even reinforce poverty in American society? This paper demonstrates through the scholarly literature that poverty results far more from cultural forces than from individual habits or personal failings. By tracing the concept from its origins in anthropology through to contemporary education policy, a picture emerges of poverty as a self-reinforcing cultural cycle.

Origin of the Concept of 'Culture of Poverty'

Anthropologist Oscar Lewis first used the phrase "culture of poverty" in an article he published in 1959 about rural migrants arriving in Mexico City (Rosemblatt, 2009, p. 617). One important result of Lewis's research is that scholars began using "culture" as a way to describe and define poverty, rather than linking poverty to racial science. The training Lewis had received at Columbia University — and his extensive interaction with intellectuals in Mexico — caused him to lean toward the idea that "race was irrelevant in explaining social phenomena" such as poverty (Rosemblatt, 607).

Lewis disliked the "inadequate generalizations" of culture-and-personality approaches to anthropological research because they had "plagued racial thinkers" who were in a constant search for "racial types" (Rosemblatt, 609). Instead of pursuing racial explanations, Lewis — who was bilingual — collaborated with Mexican scholars researching the link between cultural and racial differences and "economic development, class, and material culture" (Rosemblatt, 610).

As author Rosemblatt explains, within months of Lewis's original article, the idea that the poor had "a distinct culture became part of a passionate, decade-long, worldwide debate about poverty… what caused poverty and how to remedy it."

Types of Poverty and Their Cultural Dimensions

Kristen Cuthrell, Joy Stapleton, and Carolyn Ledford examine the culture of poverty in the United States in their peer-reviewed article in the journal Preventing School Failure. The authors point out that according to the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) — using statistics from 2006 — about 1.3 million children had "fallen into poverty" since 2000 (Cuthrell, et al., 2010, p. 104). As of 2010, approximately 13 million children in America were living in poverty. That translates into a 9% chance that any given American child is being raised in a poverty household, meaning that one in six children in America is poor, and one in three African-American children are poor.

The number of children worldwide living in poverty is far greater than in the U.S. alone. An estimated 5.6 million children struggle in households steeped in poverty around the world, reflecting a 22% increase since the year 2000 (Cuthrell, 104). The authors examine strategies that can be effective in educating students and their families from the culture of poverty, and they identify distinct types of poverty worth distinguishing.

"Situational poverty" refers to circumstances caused by an illness or a job loss — situations that are generally not permanent. Such poverty may be triggered by a sudden, unanticipated event that hits a family hard, but the expectation is that the family will work to escape the situation as quickly as possible. By contrast, "generational poverty" is defined as "an ongoing cycle of poverty in which two or more generations of families experience limited resources." Generational poverty has "its own culture," the authors explain, and within that culture are "hidden rules and belief systems" (Cuthrell, 105). The third type, "absolute poverty," describes a situation in which families and individuals scramble continually to find enough food and other bare essentials (Cuthrell, 105).

Poverty, as defined by Payne (referenced by Cuthrell on page 105), is "the extent to which an individual does without resources." Payne identifies eight resources whose presence or absence determines the effect of poverty: financial, emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, support systems, relationships and role models, and knowledge of hidden rules (Cuthrell, 105). Notwithstanding financial shortages, the authors note that a strong individual can lessen the burden of poverty if he or she has "strong emotional, spiritual, and physical support" (105). Children and adults living in the culture of poverty can and do work their way out if they have the "ability to form warm relationships," a "caregiver who values education," "an internal locus of control," and the opportunity to participate in "recreational and service-oriented activities" (Cuthrell, 105).

Conclusion

There is indeed a culture of poverty, and as yet the federal government has not been able to break the cycle, although many programs and billions of tax dollars have been invested in the effort. Schools are certainly important in helping students advance and escape poverty, but too many rural and low-income schools remain underfunded and neglected. Until there is genuine fairness and equality in the educational system, there is little prospect of breaking the culture of poverty.