Concentrated Disadvantage and Beliefs about the Causes of Poverty: A Multi-Level Analysis

Merolla, David M.; Hunt, Matthew O.; Serpe, Richard T.

doi:10.1525/sop.2011.54.2.205

Cited by 46 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Several studies have also found that racial minorities score higher than Whites on both individualism and structuralism (Bullock, Williams, and Limbert 2003;Hunt 1996Hunt , 2004Merolla, Hunt, and Serpe 2011); these findings support the concept of "dual consciousness." The literature has been mixed on the relationship between education and structuralism, but has generally found a negative relationship between education and individualism (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…Research on the demographic correlates of attributions has shown that women are more structuralist in their attributions than men (Hunt 2004;Kluegel 1987;Merolla, Hunt, and Serpe 2011;Shirazi and Biel 2005) and non-Whites are more structuralist than Whites (Adeola 2005;Cozzarelli, Wilkinson, and Tagler 2001;Feagin 1975;Hunt 1996Hunt , 2004Merolla, Hunt, and Serpe 2011). Several studies have also found that racial minorities score higher than Whites on both individualism and structuralism (Bullock, Williams, and Limbert 2003;Hunt 1996Hunt , 2004Merolla, Hunt, and Serpe 2011); these findings support the concept of "dual consciousness."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…The primary methodology for most studies investigating causal attributions of poverty was pioneered by Joe Feagin (1975 Bobo and Kluegel 1993;Hunt 1996Hunt , 2004Merolla, Hunt, and Serpe 2011;Robinson 2009 Hunt 1996). Although studies have occasionally referenced an additional type of attribution (as discussed below), the majority of published research has focused on individualism and structuralism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although studies have occasionally referenced an additional type of attribution (as discussed below), the majority of published research has focused on individualism and structuralism. Feagin's original survey format was foundational in the study of stratification beliefs and has been subsequently employed primarily to study the causal attributions of poverty and Black-White inequality (Hunt 2007;Kluegel 1990;Kluegel and Bobo 1993), in addition to a wide variety of other beliefs (Adeola 2005;Hunt 1996Hunt , 2004Nilson 1981;Shirazi and Biel 2005;Kluegel and Smith 1986;Smith and Stone 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The consensus of several decades of research is that these are instead two related, but distinct, types of beliefs that people may hold in combination, sometimes called "dual consciousness," "split consciousness," "compromise," or "mixed" explanations (Hunt 1996;Hunt 2004;Kluegel and Smith 1986;Kluegel and Bobo 1993;Kluegel, Mason, and Wegener 1995;Lee, Jones, and Lewis 1990;Merolla, Hunt, and Serpe 2011). 2 Although seemingly contradictory, this pattern of adherence to both individualism and structuralism is quite common, especially among racial minorities (Hughes and Tuch 1999;Hunt 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2017

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Prior research on stratification beliefs has investigated individuals' understandings regarding the causes of poverty in America. These past studies have uncovered demographic characteristics associated with individualist and structuralist explanations for poverty. In the current study, we will argue that Americans, like social scientists, envision poverty as a heterogeneous and complex phenomenon. We utilize a cultural cognition theoretical approach to conceptualize these understandings of poverty as schemas. We contend that a schema of poverty contains a set of unique associations regarding both demographic beliefs (who the poor are) and causal attributions (why they are poor). Using original data in a mixed-methods design that incorporates inductive and experimental components, 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, in most cases, as important as or more important than a respondent's own demographic characteristics in predicting what type of causal attributions he or she makes for poverty. These findings underscore the importance of investigating different schemas of poverty in future stratification beliefs research.The authors wish to thank Mark Chaves, who supervised this project as part of the Logic of Inquiry course at Duke University. This study would not have been possible without his guidance and generous provision of funding. The authors also wish to thank Lynn Smith-Lovin for her support of this research project. Naomi Quinn and Claudia Strauss also provided eminently helpful feedback on this paper. We address this gap in the literature through a two-stage mixed-methods design. First, we inductively assess people's understandings of poverty using structured interviews. Next, we use these interviews to construct a survey that includes new items of poverty beliefs that reflect both interviewees' understandings of poverty and empirical facts about poverty from the current sociological literature on stratification.Finally, we utilize the theoretical concept of cultural schemas to identify the constituent parts of beliefs about poverty. To do so, we rely on the connectionist theory of cognition, which implies that individuals have mental models that are and Tranby 2007), we are, to our knowledge, the first to operationalize and apply the insights of schema theory to beliefs about poverty. In their foundational work on stratification beliefs, Kluegel and Smith (1986, 16) briefly mention schemas and suggest how they may be relevant to beliefs about poverty, but this aspect of their work has remained largely undeveloped. We concretize schemas of poverty as shared mental models of who is poor and why they are poor. We then demonstrate that people's perceptions regarding types of poverty differ in these two key respects, employing a survey-experiment to show that this is t...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 72%