Assess the argument that rather than eliminating poverty, the Welfare State has created a form of dependency culture.

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Assess the argument that rather than eliminating poverty, the Welfare State has created a form of ‘dependency culture’.

In 1997 when New Labour came to power, approximately fourteen million people in Britain were living in relative poverty (George et al, 1995). Relative poverty occurs when people live below the generally accepted standard of living within a particular society, even though universal basic needs are met. For Britain in 1997, this equated to one quarter of the total population. Consequently, the government set out new policies to tackle the ever growing problem. This essay will look at different theories of poverty and examine whether they help alleviate the problem, or push people further into a culture of dependency.

One theory which attempts to understand poverty is that of the Culture of Poverty. The Culture of Poverty links economic deprivation and marginalisation, and the politics and culture of society (Clarke et al, 1994). In other words, people can be poor because of their social exclusion from society. A cultural explanation looks at how health inequalities are rooted in the behaviour and lifestyles of the individual and that those suffering poor health have different attitudes, values and lifestyles which mean they don’t look after themselves. Even though these adults know the adverse affects it will have on their health, they continue with this lifestyle because to them it is a way of coping with the everyday stress that living in poverty has on them. Cultural explanations pinpoint the cause of poverty and suggest that the poor are individuals who have been badly socialised that they possess deviant values or they are part of a deviant subculture (Clarke et al, 1994). The Culture of Poverty identifies that the poor have a distinctive set of attitudes, norms and values. These norms are then transmitted to each new generation creating a poverty stricken subculture which is independent of the rest of society. As a result the poor are unable to see the benefits of increasing living standards because they are conditioned to accept their situation and unwilling to make the effort to change it.

With this in mind, we can see how the culture of poverty can cause deprivation today. For those within the culture, the ever present feeling of fatalism will continually put these people at a disadvantage as they are ready and able to accept the situation they are faced with. With this fatalistic approach, a sense of immediate gratification will soon develop as living for the moment will take priority as planning for future for reward will not hold any meaning. As a consequence, key social areas such as educational achievement will not hold much importance when compared to the immediate rewards of becoming a wage earner. With a lack of educational attainment, it is likely that other key areas will require some sort of welfare supplement. According to figures produced in 2000, over thirty million people were receiving income from some sort of benefit payment (Ellison et al, 2003).

With the culture of poverty having a direct influence over educational achievement and the life success of an individual, the number of individuals claiming housing benefit presents a worrying image of how the culture of poverty is increasing. From 1978/1979 to 2001/2, the proportion of social security spent on housing benefit has trebled from four and a half per cent to eleven and a half per cent respectively (Ellison et al, 2003). The main cause of this rise was an increase in the number of claimants along with a rise in housing association and local authority rents, making a dependency on welfare payments inevitable due to the financial constraints placed on individuals.

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However, the Culture of Poverty was criticised by some sociologists as it ignored structural causes of deprivation. American anthropologist, Walter Miller (1962), claims that the American lower class has its own set of focal concerns that emphasise masculinity, living for the present and luck rather than effort as the basis of success. He claims that this class subculture is self perpetuating and is an adaptation to low skill occupations. For example, people with this attitude have an increased ability to tolerate boring work and to find gratification away from the workplace (Loney et al, 1993).

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