Marxists argue that poverty is caused deliberately by the economic system and that money is the motivation for work. They state that the unequal monetary rewards motivate workers to compete for higher wages and that capitalism requires highly motivated workers. One sociologist, Jack Kincaid stated that the low wage sector is an inevitable feature of capitalist society and that it benefits the employer in many ways. It creates a reserve army of labour, it divides the working class (therefore there is no united working class which could threaten to overthrow the bourgeois and it drives down benefit levels and thus increases the motivation to work. He argued that only the abolition of capitalism would lead to the abolition of inequality.
However, Jack Kincaid’s work was criticised in many ways, it did not explain how some groups were more prone to poverty than others (for example, blacks and females) and Townsend stated that the state can influence the operation of the labour market, for example, by introducing the equal pay act for women.
However, others disagree with the structural view and state that poverty is the result of cultural or dependency based explanations. There are many theories which take this point of view. Oscar Lewis’ “Culture of Poverty” was a piece of research carried out among the poor in Mexico and Puerto Rico in the 1950’s and 1960’s. He stated that when the poor were segregated into shanty towns or villages, they adapted to their problems by developing their own subculture, which far from alleviating poverty, made it more difficult for them to escape from it. He argued that for individuals, there is a strong feeling of helplessness, dependence, inferiority and little ability to defer gratification with a sense of resignation and fatalism. He said that such attitudes led to unemployment and unskilled, low-paid jobs, thus making it difficult for the poor to plan or save for the future. Lewis also argues that at a community level, the poor are unlikely to participate in those organisations (for example, trade unions and political parties) which could campaign for improvements. However, he was uncertain about the degree of change that could be brought about through changes in the structure of society; he believed that the culture of poverty was transmitted from one generation to another.
However, some say that there is no such thing as a culture of poverty, that the values developed by the poor are a natural and rational reaction to the conditions of hopelessness, that it is a lack of resources and not values which hold people back. Many sociologists argue that the poor are excluded and therefore it is logical to not bother planning long-term for the future as it is unlikely that they will be able to break free from their poverty.
Another theory which seeks to explain poverty from a cultural or dependency point of view is that of “The Cycle of Deprivation”, a piece of research by Rutter and Madge. They argued that there is a cycle of deprivations whereby the poverty of the parents is passed onto the children. They saw that there was a variety of factors which could create disadvantage. One example was that poor backgrounds could lead to underachievement at school and thus this could lead to unskilled work or unemployment, they added that this could in turn, lead to crime or mental illness. Rutter and Madge stated that a child could enter the cycle at any point and would then get caught up in it, making escape very difficult. Their view stressed that the poor do not have a different culture from the rest of society but that there are situational constraints which prevented the poor from behaving in the same way as others (for example, lack of educational and job opportunities, poor housing, malnutrition, illness and disability). They argued that the behaviour of the poor is a reaction to their disadvantaged social situation.
On the other hand, this view has been criticised in many ways, many individuals break out of the cycle, thus showing that the generalisations of Rutter and Madge are not always correct. It states that all poor are very deterministic, it does not account for many individuals becoming disadvantaged when their parents weren’t and it does not explain where poverty comes from in the first place, the latter being a Marxist criticism of this theory.
Charles Murray’s theory of “The Underclass” had roots in Lewis’ work in Mexico, Charles Murray criticised the USA and UK for their welfare systems, and he argued that it made poor people develop a culture of dependency. The Underclass thesis stated that poverty is a response to cultural, economic and welfare changes. He argued that the welfare state has created an underclass of poor people who are lazy and prefer to live off the state rather than work. By Underclass, Murray means a significant and self reproducing group, who form a distinctive bottom element of the class structure in UK and US societies, he did accept that there are poor people who are poor through no fault of their own and his analysis of the USA differed from the UK as his study of the USA focused heavily on “American Blacks” whereas in Britain, his analysis was not race based. He argued that a clear segment of the working class can be seen through crime (very high proportion of the violent and property crime is carried out by a small proportion of the population), Illegitimacy (very high levels of children born outside marriage, the outcome of casual sex and the fathers having no interest in supporting child or mother) and Economic inactivity (high levels of long-term unemployment that characterise the same relatively small group of people).
However, some sociologists argue that it is factually wrong, that there is no evidence that a group exists which rejects the work ethic. They state that the majority of lone parents want a stable relationship and a job and they argue that there is no clear link between lone parents and crime. It can be argued that this theory is totally outdated also, that there has been a significant increase in the amount of working lone parents who can support themselves and their children whilst holding down a full time (or part-time) job.
Thus it can be seen that poverty appears to be caused by economic inequality rather than cultural attitudes and lifestyle. It is evident that many of the theories which support this view are far more realistic and explanatory of poverty than the cultural explanations, which are outdated and deterministic. It is impossible to state that there is only one factor that contributes to poverty, however, and thus it seems far more likely that poverty is caused by a mixture of economic inequality and cultural attitudes and lifestyle rather than one or the other. It is increasingly hard to generalise “the poor” from any theory that seeks to explain poverty as there are always exceptions to the rule. It cannot be stated that all poor people are lazy and do not wish to work, as many people living in poverty actively seek work or are in poverty due to holding low-paid or unskilled jobs. It cannot be argued that poverty is caused by the capitalist economic system (as the Marxists argue) as it does not explain why some groups (for example, women) are more prone to poverty than others.
Poverty is caused by a combination of factors from both the structural debates and the cultural argument and both have to be taken into account in order to draw a conclusion about the principle cause of poverty in society.
