8.6 The Dynamics of Poverty versus the Culture of Poverty

 The Dynamics of Poverty versus the Culture of Poverty 8.6 

Contrast the dynamics of poverty with the culture of poverty, explain why people are poor and how deferred gratification is related to poverty, and comment on the Horatio Alger myth. ​​​​

Some have suggested that the poor get trapped in a culture of poverty (Lewis 1966a; Ray and Tillman 2019). This term generally refers to the poor having values and behaviors that make them different from other Americans that hold them down, and keep them from getting out of poverty. Lurking behind this concept is the idea that the poor are lazy people who bring poverty on themselves. Certainly, some individuals and families do match this stereotype—many of us have known them. But is a self-perpetuating culture—one that poor people transmit across generations and that locks them in poverty—the basic reason for U.S. poverty?​​ Contrary to the stereotype of lazy people who sit back sucking welfare, poverty is dynamic. Many people live on the edge of poverty, managing, but barely, to keep their heads above poverty. But then comes some dramatic life change, such as a divorce, an accident, an illness, or the loss of a job. This poverty trigger pushes them over the ledge they were holding on to by their fingertips, and they find themselves in the poverty they fiercely had been trying to avoid. With people moving in and out of poverty, most poverty is short-lived, lasting less than a year. Yet from one year to the next, the number of poor people remains about the same. This means that the people who move out of poverty are replaced by people who move into poverty. 

Most of these newly poor will also move out of poverty within a year. Some people even bounce back and forth, never quite making it securely out of poverty (Rank and Hirschi 2015).

 Few poor people enjoy poverty—and they do what they can to avoid being poor. In the end, though, poverty touches a lot more people than the annual totals indicate. 

Although 15 percent of Americans may be poor at any one time, before they turn 65, about 60 percent of the U.S. population will experience a year of poverty (Rank and Hirschi 2015).