8.6.2: Deferred Gratification

 8.6.2: Deferred Gratification Not all poverty is short, and about 12 percent of Americans are poor for ten years or longer (Rank and Hirschi 2015). One consequence of a life of deprivation punctuated by emergencies—and of viewing the future as promising more of the same—is a lack of deferred gratification, giving up things in the present for the sake of greater gains in the future. It is difficult to practice this middle-class virtue of deferring gratification if you do not have a middle-class surplus—or middle-class hope. 258 In a classic 1967 study of black street-corner men, sociologist Elliot Liebow noted that the men did not defer gratification. Their jobs were low-paying and insecure, their lives pitted with emergencies. With the future looking exactly like the present and any savings they did manage gobbled up by emergencies, it seemed pointless to save for the future. The only thing that made sense from their perspective was to enjoy what they could at the moment. Immediate gratification, then, was not the cause of their poverty but, rather, its consequence. Cause and consequence loop together, however: Their immediate gratification helped perpetuate their poverty. For another look at this “looping,” see the following Down-to-Earth Sociology, in which I share my personal experience with poverty. Down-to-Earth Sociology Poverty: A Personal Journey I was born in poverty. My parents, who could not afford to rent either a house or an apartment, rented the tiny office in their minister’s house. This is where I was born. My father, who had only a seventh-grade education, began to slowly climb the social class ladder. His fitful odyssey took him from laborer to truck driver to the owner of a series of small businesses (tire repair shop, bar, hotel), and from there to vacuum cleaner salesman, and back to bar owner. He converted a garage into a house. Although it had no indoor plumbing, it was a start. Later, he bought a house, and then he built a new home. After that we moved into a trailer, and then back to a house. Although he always had a low income, poverty eventually became a distant memory for him. My social class took a leap—from working class to upper-middle class—when, after attending college and graduate school, I became a university professor. I entered a world that was unknown to my parents, one much more pampered and privileged. I had opportunities to do research, to publish, and to travel to exotic places. My reading centered on sociological research, and I read books in Spanish as well as in English. My father, in contrast, never read a book in his life, and my mother read only detective stories and romance paperbacks. One set of experiences isn’t “better” than the other, just significantly different in determining what windows of perception it opens onto the world. My interest in poverty, rooted in my own childhood experiences, stayed with me. I traveled to a dozen or so skid rows across the United States and Canada, talking to homeless people and staying in their shelters. In my own town, I spent considerable time with people on welfare, observing how they lived. I constantly marveled at the connections between structural causes of poverty (low education, low skills, low pay, the irregularity of unskilled jobs, undependable transportation) and personal causes (the culture of poverty—alcohol and drug abuse, multiple out-of-wedlock births, frivolous spending, all-night partying, domestic violence, criminal involvement, and a seeming incapacity to keep appointments—except to pick up the welfare check). Sociologists haven’t unraveled this connection, and as much as we might like for only structural causes to apply, both are at work (Freeman et al. 2019). The situation can be illustrated by looking at the perennial health problems I observed among the poor—the constant colds, runny noses, backaches, and injuries. The health problems stem from the social structure (less access to medical care, less capable physicians, drafty houses, little knowledge about nutrition, and more dangerous jobs). At the same time, personal characteristics—hygiene, eating habits, drug and alcohol abuse—cause health problems. Which is the cause and which the effect? Both, of course: One loops into the other. The medical problems (which are based on both personal and structural causes) feed into the poverty these people experience, making them less able to perform their jobs successfully—or even to show up at work regularly. What an intricate puzzle for sociologists! Hearing from the Author: Poverty: A Personal Journey Listen to the Audio If both structural and personal causes are at work, why do sociologists emphasize the structural explanation? 

Reverse the situation for a moment. Suppose that members of the middle class drove old cars that broke down, faced threats from the utility company to shut off the electricity and heat, and had to make a choice between paying the rent or buying medicine and food and diapers.

 How long would they practice deferred gratification? Their orientations to life would likely make a sharp U-turn. 

Sociologists, then, do not view the behaviors of the poor as the cause of their poverty but, rather, as the result of their poverty. 

Poor people would welcome the middle-class opportunities that would allow them the chance to practice the middle-class virtue of deferred gratification. Without those opportunities, though, they just can’t afford it.