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Ideal Types of the 'culture of poverty' and its implicit alternative

Culture of PovertyDominant, or Idealized Culture

Time Horizon: Short Long

Investment

strategy

Do not save or invest (welfare

recipients are prevented from

saving)

Save for children's educations,

Invest in property to pass on to

future generations

Family unit

(Think of theRivers family in

There Are No

Children Hereas

one example).

unstable families, unwed

mothers, teen parents,

extended families raise the kidswhen mom proves unable.

Cohabitation replaces

marriage, and divorce is

common. (Marriage may

disqualify single women from

receiving welfare).

According to one view, parents

in unstable relationships cannot

invest sufficiently in their

childrens futures, so thechildren grow up without the

skills to succeed in society, and

they recreate the same pattern

of teen pregnancy and unstable

relationships.

In addition, poor people have

more children than they can

afford. The more children they

have, the less money and timethey can spend on each one.

Stable, monogamous, nuclear

family. Children are produced only

within long term stable andcommitted families.

In the conservative version of the

idealized family, the father works

and the mother remains home to

tend to the children. This division

of labor is supposed to provide

benefits to both spouses (a division

of labor which maximizes trade

between them, see Gary Beckers

Treatise on the Family). Thismodel only works if the wife can

be sure that the husband will not

abandon her, because specializing

in domestic skills does not leave

the wife with sufficient labor

market skills.

The idealized mainstream family

has a small number of children, and

invests heavily in their future. Thisis Gary Beckers trade-off between

quality and quantity of children.

Orientation to

work

Unreliable, poor work ethic. Diligent, works hard for future

rewards, dependable, believes that

the system will eventually reward

loyal service

View of Pleasure Pleasure should be taken when

available

Rather than spending time and

money on vacations or luxuries,save for the future.

ure of Poverty http://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/urb_culture_of_poverty.ht

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Key Figures:

Oscar Lewis

Charles Murray

Issues:

Adaptive Culture

Where does the culture of poverty come from?

Is it culturally transmitted? What about familial, intergenerational transmission?

What are the structural determinants?

Dual Labor Market (Michael Piore)

The relevance of family and family structure:

* Key historical figure: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and his report on the black family, "The Negro

Family: The Case for National Action, first written as background for a speech by LBJ in 1964, updated

and published in 1965. Moynihan viewed single motherhood, i.e. the matrifocal family of inner city blacksas a fundamental limit to black social and economic progress. See Rainwater and Yancys 1967 book, The

Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy, for a review of criticisms of Moynihan.

Modern research substantiates the idea that children raised by single parents do worse (are more

likely to drop out of high school, more likely to get pregnant in their teen years, etc.) Why?

According to McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) Growing up with a Single Parent,

* Single parents have much lower income than two-parent couples. This means worse housing, worse

neighborhoods, and worse schools. Most single parents are mothers, whose incomes are already

substantially lower than mens incomes.

* A single parent simply cannot have as much time to spend with and supervise the children as two

parents can.

* For a variety of reasons that are not quite so clear, step parents and grand parents turn out to be not afully satisfactory substitutes for the original bio-parents.

ure of Poverty http://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/urb_culture_of_poverty.ht

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