Culture Of Poverty

Term Paper Title	Culture Of Poverty
# of Words	310
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	1.24

Culture of Poverty

�Culture of Poverty�

The �culture of poverty� was introduced or was popularized by Oscar Lewis
while studying poor families in Mexico and Puerto Rican families San Juan and
New York. The theory maintains that culturally based attitudes or predisposition
such as �present-mindedness� and �obsessive-consumption� are the major
barriers to economic mobility for many of the poor. Lewis� theory likewise
implies that this is not a short-lived financial predicament for the poor, but a
way of life bolstered by the hopelessness of accomplishing even minor economic
goals.

Lewis argues that there are certain cultural characteristics among the poor
in industrial capitalist societies. Lewis and others agree that poor people in
such societies display certain characteristics and values that are not held by
non-poor in those same societies. �These characteristics are: the absence of
childhood as a specially prolonged and protected state in the life-cycle, early
initiation into sex, free unions or consensual marriages, a relatively high
incidents of abandonment of wives and childr...

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