Being and Becoming Poor: How Cultural Schemas Shape Beliefs about Poverty

• In Event: 528 - Regular Session. The Limits of Intergenerational Mobility and the Power of Social Reproduction

Abstract

Prior research on stratification beliefs has investigated people’s understandings of what causes poverty in America. Researchers have uncovered demographic characteristics associated with individualist versus structuralist explanations for poverty. In this study, we aim to show that Americans, like social scientists, have cognitive schemas regarding poverty that encapsulate more than just a single, monolithic idea of the poor. We further demonstrate that these schemas of poverty contain associations regarding both demographic beliefs (who the poor are) and causal attributions (why they are poor). Using a mixed-methods, experimental design, we find that people differentiate between two key types of poverty: intergenerational poverty and downward mobility. People perceive each type of poverty as caused by a different set of factors and as experienced by a different group of people. The type of poverty envisioned is as important or more important than a respondent’s demographic characteristics in predicting what type of causal attributions a respondent makes for poverty. This underscores the importance of investigating different schemas of poverty in future stratification beliefs research.

Authors

• Patricia Ann Homan, Duke University

• Lauren Valentino, Duke University

• Emi A. Weed, Duke University