Confronting the ''Culture of the Poor'' Ideology

Great Debates
1

Ok, full disclosure: I am a social worker, I work in an urban neighborhood with very high poverty and the highest murder rate in Philadelphia. Most of our kids are migrants from Puerto Rico. I was raised in the conservative rural midwest, but I was educated by some fairly radical liberals and am a fairly radical liberal myself. I hate poverty.

I had this class in grad school called Poverty, Welfare and Work. The professor had done a lot of qualitative research on poverty. One thing I liked about her, though, is she exposed us regularly to influential works from the conservative perspective.

So one of the major issues we examined was the 1965 Moynihan Report that characterized “The Negro Family” and explained poverty as a culture with specific patterns of behavior as opposed to something that just happens to unfortunate people.

You probably don’t have to guess how well that was received by his fellow Democrats. The irony is that Moynihan was trying to make an argument for why public jobs programs should have more support - because he viewed unemployment as a major cause of dysfunction in families.

While I know that the race and gender issues here are certainly worth exploring, that’s not what I’m going for with this post. I’m more interested in the general conservative idea that people make poor choices which lead to poverty. The reason I mention Moynihan is because I have seen it suggested that this landmark event pretty much shut down all liberal dialog about ‘‘The Culture of Poverty.’’ The bulk of our research from that point on was strongly opposed to and trying to disprove this notion. I have met many, many people who staunchly reject the idea that someone who is poor could in any way be at fault for their situation. It is a very unpopular view in liberal circles, to the extent that it’s rarely even discussed and readily dismissed as conservative propaganda.

So this is the thing - and I direct this mostly to my fellow liberals.

Really? Do you really not see that a lot of people receiving public assistance make some really dumb shit decisions?

I am NOT saying that poor people deserve to be poor, or trying to make any sweeping generalizations or anything, but most of the liberals I know will barely even acknowledge that anyone is trying to game the system or is spending unwisely or is just a really lousy employee or whatever. I’m not even thinking about the people I serve at work - I’m talking about people I run into all the time, like that friend of my cousin’s who refuses to get his shit together. Those people exist. And I wonder if it’s dangerous for us to dismiss that reality as just another conservative talking point.

Yes, TANF can incentivize someone not to work. Yes, some people spend their food stamps on stupid shit. Yes, some women have babies just for the financial support. This, as we know, is not the whole truth - but it is true. For whatever reason, some families, some neighborhoods, get stuck in pervasive patterns of unhelpful behavior that contribute to their poverty. For some people, the ‘‘culture of poverty’’ is a real thing.

If we really believe our ideology is the correct one, then why do we essentially put our collective fingers in our ears whenever the subject comes up? It has been argued that our refusal to face the truth weakened the Democratic movement in general and allowed conservatives to completely take over the dialog.

Liberals, how do you grapple with this issue?

2

I don’t know about extra-economic influences like family, but as someone who has hovered on the lower-middle class/poor boundary line all my life, I can tell you that it’s very easy to adopt a “poor” mindset, especially about economic choices. The following Cracked.com article summed it up very nicely:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor/

3

I see it. Like you, I work with urban poor, although my clients are mostly African-American, not Puerto Rican. I know this week I’m going to have a lot of missed visits, as some of my “I’m homebound, I can’t possibly go to the pharmacy to pick up my medication, you have to get it for me!” folks suddenly find the wherewithal to take their SSDI checks to the bank and then to the bars and brothels. Happens the first week of every month. I’ve seen the shady deals, where the mom with WIC sells excess cans of formula and jars of peanut butter for cash outside the Walgreens and then buys makeup with it. I’ve listened to them bitching up a storm this last month as they’ve gotten their Medicare letters telling them they’re going to have to start paying $2.60 to use the emergency room. Me, with no health insurance at all, nodding my head compassionately as these leeches bitch about a $2.60 copay…

But for every loser spending his SSDI payment on hookers and blow and then complaining he can’t afford the $2 Medicare copay for his heart medicine, there are a dozen who are paying their bills, giving their grandkids a couple of bucks in their birthday card, and offering me fruit from their Meals on Wheels delivery to take home to my little girl because they’re generous and lovely people.

I’m unwilling to punish the stupid and evil by hurting the merely unfortunate. And so I continue to support financial programs such as TANF, Section 8, SSDI and others which are unmistakably abused by some. Because they are not abused by all. And every time I hear someone talking about how stupid and lazy and awful “those people” on food stamps are, I realize that they have no idea that they’re talking about me, once upon a time, and hundreds of thousands like me who needed help for a while, and then got back on our feet and off TANF. I’ve yet to hear a better way to manage the system that still protects those who aren’t abusing it.

4

I don’t think these two attitudes are mutually exclusive. That is, I think a lot of poor people make really dumb shit decisions, and I also believe that it’s generally not their fault that they make those bad decisions because they weren’t given the same opportunity to learn otherwise.

When I was in 8th grade, my public school in the suburbs made me take a shop class, where I learned how to operate machinery AND balance a checkbook, thanks to my shop teacher’s insistence on making us “buy” our supplies with pretend checks. Meanwhile, kids at some junior high schools are just trying not to get shot. I don’t see how I can rightly judge them for growing up having an inferior set of life skills.

I guess the question is, if someone grows up in a family/household/culture that doesn’t adequately prepare them to be a productive member of society, how much do you hold that person at fault?

5

The conservative opposition isn’t really addressing that issue. Their ideology is about low taxes and scapegoats.

As far as poverty as a result of poor choices, I think few people sink from prosperity into poverty. If you are born poor unless you are an exceptional person you will not readily have the resources to make your way out of poverty. When your family, friends, and community all have become accustomed to the impoverished life, you won’t have the examples to follow to find your way out.

As far as the poor choices made by those who are already poor, they’re just like the poor choices made by those who are better off. The vast majority of people make dumb choices on a regular basis, you could easily say they would be better off financially if they didn’t spend frivously on new cars, large houses, dining out, and all the other luxuries of life. When you’re poor, only exceptionally good choices will get you out of poverty.

6

I completely agree with this. I’m not personally interested in assigning blame so much as better understanding the nature of the problem so that interventions for poverty are more effective.

And of course, ‘‘taking advantage’’ types of people exist in all class levels - I know rich kids with about the same mentality, the only difference is they have an unlimited supply of money that significantly reduces their chances of becoming poor.

7

Good point.

8

I’m a conservative and I definitely think people stay poor in large part through continual bad decisions. There’s even good evidence out there that poor people, given money through various aid programs, often never break the cycle of poverty because they make bad decisions.

But I think that is why many people stay poor, that’s not the reason they were poor in the first place. There’s tons of reasons for that, many/most of them not the fault of the poor person. It doesn’t even have to be anyone’s fault, sometimes people just have a string of bad things happen in their life, and it dooms them to poverty.

I do think social welfare should be a lot different than it is. I’m actually more in favor of replacing most “pseudo-redistributive” programs with straight out wealth redistribution. Basically you get a check, the lower your income the bigger your check. A negative tax. I don’t think we need a lot of investigation and criteria and etc from the government to decide what aid people will get and how they use it. If someone wants to blow their whole check the first of the month on beer and cigarettes and gambling, I think that should be their choice.

There’s a few specific programs I would keep:

-Medical insurance programs, because the cash payouts involved to replace this would be very large and the results of people spending that cash on other stuff are very bad.
-WIC, because the controls in the WIC Program insure children are getting nutritious food (at least as best as we can insure such things) and there’s no way mom can blow all the money and leave the kids starving.

I actually don’t really think my negative tax would work better than our current system, I just think the current system of having all kinds of criteria for people to get aid is some weird game we play to try and convince ourselves we aren’t a country with some socialist programs. I’m fine with some socialist programs and I think we should just make them outright wealth redistribution. Maybe people will use it to save for their kid’s college, get better housing or whatever. But if not, that’s their choice.

9

I’d say the best solution is dispersal. Just because we have poor people does not mean we have to have poor neighborhoods. Poor people should not be required, indeed should not be allowed, to live next door to other poor people.

10

But there is definitely a culture of the poor, though. I’m a lot more familiar with the poverty I was exposed to growing up in rural Virginia. Our poverty doesn’t involve the same stereotypes as inner city black / Hispanic poverty but it has its own set of negative stereotypes. You have families in which there are a lot of single mothers or fathers who aren’t really good role models. The single mothers have lead lives fraught with bad decisions as have the fathers. Neither parent is particularly likely to have gone to college or done particularly well in High School. In my day it was likely they hadn’t graduated High School but these days High School graduation rates are high enough even in poorer communities more have High School diplomas than do not.

When your parents concept of doing well in life is having some decent job that allows you to pay for whatever expenses come up during the week they aren’t going to push you to pursue better opportunities or take your education seriously.

I remember a conversation many years ago I had with a high school friend of mine. We were both in our 20s, he was working a blue collar job and I was an officer in the Army. He made more money than me, but after various benefits I’d say it was closer to break even. But we had very different philosophies on life. I told him about money I was saving away in mutual funds because I wanted to have more than just my pension when I retired after I put in my 20. He said when he got his paycheck he paid all the bills that were due that week and spent the rest on whatever he wanted. He said he didn’t understand why you’d save money when you could spend it now, because “why not have fun when you’re young? who cares about having money when you’re old?” Our lives took very different paths from that point, with him never being unemployed/poor on paper for very long because he’s always worked decent blue collar jobs, but he’s never bought a nice home and has never developed even a bit of financial security in his life. He’ll eventually be old enough to collect social security and he’ll have to work part time to supplement his income. He has no savings whatsoever and now that we’re approaching 60 it’s too late to even start seriously down that path for him.

In some sense on paper he escaped his family’s cycle of poverty because he’s consistently earned above the poverty level. But he’s “lived poor” in his decision making that entire time, and that’s been passed on to his three children who may or may not do as well as he did in life but are unlikely to do any better since to them no value was ever placed on even attempting improvement in the areas that can lead to long term life improvement.

A big part of the reason poor people stay poor and wealthier people usually don’t become poor is because of a “cushion” in life. That’s absolutely true, the kid of wealthy parents who makes bad decisions has a lot of “room to fail” without catastrophic consequences. Poor people mess up a few times and any hope they had of moving out of poverty is gone. But I think people raised in the “culture of poverty” continually fail to make good decisions even if they themselves escape poverty. As has my friend who hasn’t been below the poverty level at any time since he was 20 years old, but who has very little to show for it and in many ways is still firmly part of the poor culture.

11

I don’t work with the poor (I work in the Ivory Tower), but I have seen some things: I agree with the above that people make bad decisions, and those that are in poverty sink lower. Those above poverty take a hit, but it doesn’t impact them as much. I’ve also seen people make bad decisions because they didn’t know any better. They were surrounded by others making questionable to bad decisions and didn’t have a role model to show them what value a good decision had for them and how bad decisions hurt them. I think that’s where the idea of the “culture” of poverty may be coming from.

Another element of the “culture” that I have read about is taking the long vs. short view of decisions: those who do well or can pull themselves out of a bad situation are able to forgo immediate rewards to save or position themselves for a long-term goal that does more for them. Others are not able to imagine a long-term goal or believe that they can achieve it, so they instead go for the short-term goal(s) and never build up enough of what they need to get out of their situation. If you live life for and in the present, you’re stuck, but if you live in the present for the future, then you can get some traction to move toward the future.

Then there are still others who play games and wheedle others into supporting them (we had one show up at church this Sunday, with a young girl in tow and tears and a heart breaking story - this wasn’t the first time she’s shown up just before the service) as they avoid taking responsibility and/or spend their lives playing. I don’t have much patience for them, and they are not part of my equation of how and why people remain in poverty. They’ve made their decision or are unable to say no.

So, if you’re constantly putting out fires and think that’s what life is all about, you’re stuck making bad decisions that makes more fires (i.e., the “culture”). If you put out fires and learn to avoid others, you have time and energy to create a future goal that lessens the fires and makes them easier to avoid or put out (i.e., making bad decisions, but learning to make good ones).

12

I have a sister who works as a manager for a big shipping company. Most of her employees are working-class folk. High school educated, many with minor criminal backgrounds, many quite familiar with welfare programs.

We got to talking about her work one day. One thing she said that struck me was that everyone is generally hard working, but that some of her employees have inherited behaviors that make sense given their context, but are so anti-middle class that it’s not funny. For instance, she said she had a coworker that called into work one morning to announce that she wouldn’t be coming in. Why? Because one of her cousins was missing. My sister, as diplomatically as she could, asked what would the family be doing that required this particular employee’s services. The employee thought about it and then admitted that they weren’t going to be doing anything but sitting around the phone, waiting to hear news.

I don’t know how my sister broke it down to her, but somehow she was able to convey (nicely, I’m sure) that securing her fragile income stream was more important than sitting at home, worrying.

Now it’s easy to feel like the employee was just looking for a reason not to work, but I don’t think this is the case. I think the employee’s behavior makes sense if you consider the possibility her family automatically “circles the wagons” whenever there is trauma. If everyone in your family drops everything if a member is hurt, dead, or missing, then it seems very logical that you too should drop everything. Why should everyone drop everything? Well, trauma can be expensive and chaotic, requiring last-minute babysitters and errand-runners (maybe you’re the only one with a car) and someone willing to talk to funeral directors, lawyers, hospital staff,etc. And if the family is close-knit, as many poor families are by necessity, then the trauma is evenly shared. It may be just your little cousin who’s missing, but you practically raised him. Wouldn’t you be mourning him just like you’d mourn your own kid?

So yeah, in terms of rising out of poverty, it is a bad choice to choose family drama over work. But if you’re already poor, siding with family will always seem like the wisest choice. Family is your insurance policy when you can’t afford a real one.

13

Missed the edit window: I think Martin Hyde posted what I was composing as I was composing it. Poverty is as much as mind-set and expectations of life as it is a financial position and decisions. and for full disclosure, I’m liberal and have seen the advantages and pitfalls of Socialism in France (which is different from the Socialist Boogeyman that keeps some Conservatives up at night).

14

Also, the difference between my not-poor but “culturally poor” friend and someone who is culturally poor and actually poor is mostly luck. My friend never really improved his decisionmaking, he was just fortunate that he got into a field where you can make a middle class income with no special education or training and he’s been fortunate enough to have not been out of work for very long in his life. His income stream has always been there, not because of diligence or good decisions but basically because he’s been lucky.

That’s why to me a negative income tax is a good solution for the “ills of poverty.” I’m not sure you can really cure poverty itself, because it’s not so easy to cure bad decision making and poor goal setting mostly inherited from your parents and elements out of your control. But you can cure the “ills of poverty.” My friend may have never improved his decision making but because he always had an income stream he’s avoided the “ills of poverty.” The root cause of most of the immediate problems poor people have relate to their lack of capital, their lack of steady income and how those two things are interrelated.

It’s not so important how it starts, but it feeds off that inherent lack of capital. They don’t have saved capital because their income is either too low to support savings, or they choose not to save (bad decision making.) Because they do not have saved capital, when their income stream varies or gets shut off, they’re instantly destitute. This can lead to structural problems that slowly erode opportunities. It can lock you into unreliable transportation (bad car) and then eventually maybe the car breaks down, and you can’t fix it. Now you’re stuck with riding the bus, but that immediately reduces the possible jobs you can apply for because most people aren’t going to work hours and hours walk off the bus route if that is their only way of getting around.

A negative income tax, distributed monthly or semimonthly would give a permanent revenue stream. In some ways we try to give that security with programs, but they don’t work great for the poor. For example, unemployment is supposed to help with losing your income, but it takes weeks to apply and start receiving benefits. Additionally, you typically must have a certain period of employment at the job you lost before you’re eligible for unemployment. This means many of the people who will need this income stabilization the most are either ineligible, or they are living so paycheck to paycheck that their life ends up in the toilet while they’re waiting for the first check to come.

People in nicer white collar jobs typically receive decent severance packages that bridge the gap between the day your job ends and you first unemployment checks come. They also typically have rainy day savings.

15

I don’t follow this train of thought. In one breath, you say that people should be given money to spend as they wish, In another, you would keep two programs because they are “good.” I don’t think you can have both and be sincere in this belief. If you think these two programs are good, why not allocate more money to them to make them better?

Personally, I think there are lots of people who make bad decisions and cannot escape poverty. Usually, those people start out in poverty. So, which came first, the chicken or the egg?

People make bad choices and that’s something we need to accept. The problem is that we are not addressing poverty in a direct way. We need more programs designed to house the homeless, feed the hungry, and educate our children.

There is so much emphasis placed on the individual to figure it out on their own. That’s all fine and good, but why is there not equal emphasis being placed on the fact that we are all in this together, as well?

It is not deflecting any individual responsibility, either. Each person needs to realize that if they want to live in this country, they are responsible for the well being of it. That means paying taxes for programs that benefit those who are less fortunate. It will only benefit everyone in the long run.

16

Two reasons:

  1. Medicaid doesn’t really need more money for one, and for two there are major benefits to it being government ran versus just being a voucher to buy private health insurance. Both from a cost savings perspective and a benefit perspective.

  2. WIC are benefits that by their nature must be paid to the parent but are primarily intended for the benefit of children. You can’t easily arrange for that with just a direct cash payout.

I’m not concerned with the chicken and egg problem, I don’t think it’s answerable or even needs to be answered. The primary reason impoverished people suffer various ills is because of lack of income, and that can be alleviated with a negative tax in which individuals receive cash benefits up to the poverty level or some multiple of the poverty level for persons with families based on the number of children.

If people want to follow various opportunities like more jobs training or etc, they can do that, or not.

17

I don’t. I don’t think its none of my business that Shaniqua is scamming $30 dollars out of the system, especially when you have corporations and rich folks milking the government for hundreds - if not thousands - times that. Shaniqua’s behavior is not even on my radar. I think what you’re observing is differences in how poor people raise their children and the consequences thereof.

18

From a certain POV, your way of life is better but your friend’s is . . . well . . . healthier. A deeply internalized social/psychological pressure to constantly be striving and improving – isn’t that a kind of sickness?! How can anyone live happily that way?!

I remember when East Germany collapsed, media reported that the people were bewildered because up that point, in a Stalinist-Communist society, “their lives had been on autopilot.” Well, yes and no. Only the basic-economic aspects of their lives were on autopilot (i.e., state-managed); leaving them free to live without worrying about those aspects from day to day. There really is something to be said for that, even if constant expansion of the economy is not one of the things to be said for it.

19

So you’re saying that we should ensure that people receive enough cash, either through a negative tax or a simple handout, in order to alleviate poverty?

I think all that will manage is to keep people comfortable. While that’s not a bad option, as I’m opposed to kicking people out on the streets, I’m sceptical. It’s nice to give people the freedom to make their own choices. I’m sure many would make the right ones, but a lot of others would not.

In fact, it could turn out to be a disincentive for those who are happy managing to just get by. That will piss of a lot of people who are having their tax dollars squandered, and the system will most likely fail due to it’s ineffectiveness.

There needs to be structure. For example, it’s clear that education is integral to the foundation of our society. I believe that every person is born with an inherent passion to learn. The smarter we become, the better the world becomes.

The difference here is that my view takes away much of the liberty that your people would receive. However, I still prefer my option because I don’t think picking the right programs is all that complicated. It would most likely be a trial and error process, but that’s just the way it is. No one is going to be satisfied with every decision that’s made, but I still prefer this system to the alternative.

It’s an objective fact that we all need things like food, shelter, healthcare, and a variety of other services. Social programs can form the foundation of our society. Take care of that, and you can free up the market for more creative endeavours since it will not be such a risk anymore.

So, I think that the poverty we see is more of a product of our environment. However, the paradox lies in the fact that peoples individual choices make up our environment.

20

Getting the middle class to worry about the irresponsible behavior of poor people is a way to deflect attention from the irresponsible behavior of rich people.