The literature review on the impact of socio-economic and demographic variables on perceptions of the causes of poverty revealed that most studies have examined only a small number of socio-economic and demographic variables as predictor variables. For example, the majority of the studies investigated the influence of education and race, while relatively fewer studies have focused on employment and geographic location. The literature review also showed that studies which focused on economic variables such as people’s poverty status and LSM to predict perceptions of the causes of poverty are limited. For these reasons and because prior research has sometimes yielded conflicting results, I deem it important to determine whether socio-economic variables such as people’s access to basic necessities (measured by the LPI) have an impact on individualistic, structural and fatalistic perceptions of the causes of poverty.
In this study I distinguish between the poor and non-poor on the basis of access to basic necessities. Chapter 4 explains in detail how the LPI is employed to separate the poor from the non-poor. The LPI used in the present study consists of six survey items that assess people’s ability to obtain basic necessities of life: access to food, clean water for home use, medicines or medical treatment, electricity in your home, fuel to cook your food and a cash income (Mattes et al., 2002: 6).
3.8.1 Non-poor perceptions of the causes of poverty
Research into how the elite or non-poor perceive their wealth and social status has also been very limited. Clarke and Sison (2003: 216) insisted that an understanding of elite perceptions of poverty and the poor will provide insight into the social dynamics of poverty and inequality and inform pro-poor public policy.
In their study they interview eighty members of the Filipino elite. “Elite” was broadly defined as those individuals who occupy prominent positions within society and who have a significant capacity to influence anti-poverty debates at national and local level.
The study advances the use of participatory and qualitative research methods in contrast to large-scale poverty studies which rely primarily on quantitative methods. It should be noted that Filipinos in general see a close relationship between poverty and inequality and blame poverty primarily on the elite. Even among the well-off it is found that Filipinos are concerned about poverty and inequality.
However, the study by Clarke et al. (2003: 215) demonstrated that the perceptions’ of the Filipino elite is somewhat conflicting, since some of the elite see the poor in a positive manner while others view the poor in negative way. For example, some sectors of the Filipino elite described the poor as those who lack money and who are unable to meet their basic needs. On the other hand, some of the elite also “condemned the poor as being lazy, opportunistic and fatalistic” (Clarke et al., 2003: 228). Consequently, the Clarke study found that the elite perceived the poor in both a positive and negative manner.
Willems et al. (2005:178) conducted telephone interviews with 21 general practitioners (GPs) from deprived areas of Ghent in Belgium to examine the GPs’ perception of poverty and their perceived attitude of deprived patients. The study emphasized that very little is known about how people from high-income occupations (such as GPs) define poverty, their attitude towards deprived patients, and their perceptions of the attitude of those patients towards health and the health care system. The findings of the study showed that most of the GPs identified limited communication skills, addiction, laziness, fear of what might happen in the future and lower health status as individual determining factors in poverty. The study concluded that further research is needed to understand how high income earners’ perceptions of poverty are influenced by their relationships and interactions with people living in poverty.
To further understand the positive and negative perceptions of the poor it is useful to review the impact of socio-economic status on perceptions of poverty; how exposure and encounters with the poor impact on perceptions of poverty; and how stereotypical perceptions of the racial composition affects beliefs of the causes of poverty (Wilson, 1996: 417). In this regard the public arenas theory predicts that exposure of the non-poor to the poor is a crucial way in which perceptions of poverty of the non-poor are formed.
Furthermore, two types of exposure to poverty and the poor are distinguished. First, it postulated that media exposure to issues of poverty can help shape people’s perceptions of the poor and poverty. Secondly, exposure to the poor or experiences of poverty is another way of constructing and reinforcing peoples’ perceptions of poverty.
Reutter et al. (2005: 528) have also demonstrated that people’s perceptions of poverty are influenced by their relationships and interactions with people living in poverty. I would like to emphasize that the present study values the importance of people’s lived experiences of poverty and people’s experiences with poor people in contributing or shaping one’s own perceptions of the causes of poverty.
The studies reviewed, demonstrated that the non-poor perceive the poor both in a positive and negative manner. To understand the perceptions of the non-poor it was argued that
future research is necessary to investigate the impact of exposure to poverty on the non-poor (Reutter et al., 2005: 528). I believe that this initial review of the literature reveals that the non-poor can learn about the poor through direct experience and through the media.
3.8.2 How do the poor perceive poverty?
The perceptions of non-poor should be contrasted with those of the poor or those people who live in poverty. The literature in this regard also offers the opinions of the broader public when perceptions of poverty are examined (De Haan et al., 2003: 352; May, 2000:
5; Moore, Choudhary & Singh, 1998: 3; May et al., 1997: 96). Accordingly, a growing body of literature on lay or poor people’s perceptions of poverty has surfaced. In this section I review studies that have focussed on poor people’s perceptions of poverty.
Literature with regard to poor people’s perceptions of poverty is characterized by a number of features. Probably the most important feature is that poor people perceive poverty in a multidimensional way. Moore et al. (1998: 3), for example, conducted a literature review on poor people’s perceptions of poverty in Asia and found that “rural, agrarian populations mostly defined poverty as a lack of assets (land, housing, agricultural equipment)”. The rural population also defined poverty in terms of income sources (type of wage employment), living standards (type and frequency of food intake, children not attending school); and demographic / labour variables (high dependency ratios or large numbers of children, lack of able-bodied males, sickness or disability). By contrast, in less rural areas people defined poverty in terms of the type of jobs. It was established that people in the urban areas considered secure access to residential accommodation as a correlate of poverty.
I also want to highlight a participatory poverty study which involved about 1400 people in South Africa. The study indicated that the poor are seen as being isolated from their communities, that children in poor households are malnourished with poor quality food, that houses are crowded and not maintained, that basic forms of energy is used and there
is infrequent energy supply, that no one in poor households is employed and families are fragmented with no father figure present. The findings of this study demonstrated that even though the respondents came from different communities with very divergent circumstances, they provided a relative uniform description of the living conditions of poor people (May et al., 1997: 96).
The findings of the study by May et al. (1997: 96) also demonstrate that the poor mostly identified poverty at the household or individual level such as the amount of land or assets they owned and types of employment or personal abilities. External factors such as remoteness from the town and public services were seen as less important pointing to the fact the poor tended to compare themselves with other locals or with their immediate less-poor neighbours. Another interesting finding from this study is that poor people are heterogeneous. The poor are most often wrongly described as one big group rather than a diverse group with a wide range of understandings about the causes of poverty among themselves.
A study conducted in the United States by Appelbaum et al. (2006: 388) examined the public’s views about the poor and their circumstances. More specifically, this study was interested in the role that psychological orientations (individualistic, structural and fatalistic attributions for poverty) of the evaluators play in judgments of the families in need. To understand both the characteristics of the poor families and the characteristics of the people evaluating the needs of the poor a nationally representative survey of 1570 adults in the United States was completed in 2002. The study analyzed three vignette characteristics: Lisa’s working status (whether she is working versus on welfare or her status is not indicated); whether Lisa attends school to improve her job skills; whether she is looking for a job (or a better job if she already has one).
The results by Appelbaum et al. (2006: 392) indicated that about 46 percent (somewhat) and 38 percent (very deserving) of the sample thought that Lisa deserved to receive aid.
The overall results here support previous research on Belief in Just World (BJW). It was found that respondents with a high score on the BJWS tended to see Lisa as deserving of
her situation if she was not working and struggling to survive. Similarly, respondents with a high BJWS still considered Lisa as deserving even if she was working, looking for a better job but just failed to survive. Literature suggested that the BJW will be threatened when one is confronted with an individual who remains needy despite striving to better their situation. This demonstrated a negative relationship between judgments of personal responsibility for one’s situation and judgments of deservingness to receive aid. In my opinion the study demonstrated that the harder those in need try to escape poverty the more negative they are perceived.
The results of the above three studies from Asia, South Africa and the United States further showed that poor people’s perceptions of poverty manifest in various forms. In reviewing the above studies I learn that poor people’s perceptions of poverty are clearly interconnected and interrelated within a socio-economic context. I therefore argue that when people’s perceptions are formed, their socio-economic environment plays an important role in shaping the way they think about poverty. For example, their race group, geographical location, employment and socio-economic situation, as well as educational level all determine how they perceive the causes of poverty.
In the next few sections I review literature that demonstrates that perceptions of the causes of poverty are influenced by (1) race or ethnic differences, (2) education, (3) employment status, and (4) geographical location.
3.9 PERCEPTIONS OF THE CAUSES OF POVERTY AS A FUNCTION OF