Perceptions of the Causes of Poverty in Finland

Abstract

The issue of what people consider as reasons for living in poverty is often neglected in the literature on poverty. Studies of public perceptions are needed both on academic grounds and in terms of policy-making processes. In this article, I study three different meanings of poverty: the individualistic, the fatalistic and the structural. I explore whether different meanings can be attributed to specific socio-demographic characteristics, economic circumstances and attitudes towards the welfare state. The data derive from a cross-sectional survey conducted in Finland in 2005 and the results indicate that there is strong consensus in the Finnish population on the causes of poverty. Finns are more likely to blame the flaws and inadequacies of the labour market than the behaviour of individuals or societal injustice. In other words, structural explanations of poverty have the greatest support. However, fatalistic explanations are also supported, since a considerable proportion of people regard bad luck and lack of opportunities as reasons for poverty. Applied multivariate analysis indicates that perceptions of the causes of poverty are at least to some extent related to socio-demographic characteristics, economic circumstances and attitudes to the welfare state. However, the effects, as well as the group differences, are small.

A latent profile analysis of attributions for poverty: Identifying response patterns underlying people’s willingness to help the poor

“…Bullock, Williams, and Limbert (2003) had students evaluate 45 separate causes of poverty and found that, despite the diversity of these explanations, they loaded onto three distinct factors reflecting (a) individualistic, (b) structural (i.e., society), and (c) fatalistic causes. Others have shown similar factor structures to people's attributions for poverty in various countries including (a) Ethiopia (Wollie, 2009), (b) Finland (Niemela, 2008), (c) Lebanon (Abouchedid & Nasser, 2002;Nasser, 2007), and Turkey (Morçöl, 1997). Thus, the ability to reduce various idiosyncratic attributions for poverty into three themes holds across cultures.…”

Intergenerational Social Mobility and Popular Explanations of Poverty: A Comparative Perspective

“…Morçöl, 1997;Smith & Stone, 1989), it still provides a comparatively validated classification of popular explanations about the causes of poverty (Lepianka, Van Oorschot, & Gelissen, 2009). Researchers usually find that individuals' gender, education, labour market status, social class, income, subjective experience of disadvantage, and personal ideological convictions all play a role in attitudes towards poverty determinants (Alston & Dean, 1972;Bucca, 2016;Feather, 1974;Kallio & Niemelä, 2014;Kreidl, 2000;Niemela, 2008;Stephenson, 2000;Wegener, 2000;Zucker & Weiner, 1993).…”

Causes of Poverty – What Do the Poor Think? Poverty Attribution and Its Behavioural Effects

“…In the same time, countries such as the United States of America, Italy, Austria, Spain, Canada and Portugal stand towards an individualistic causal attribution of poverty, on a societal level. Research of [1] identified a rather structuralist attribution of poverty in the Nordic countries, while [14] showed that Finland manifests a different approach towards poverty causality, considering that the individualistic and fatalist causes should be viewed as the most important. Costa and Dias, in their paper [3], have an exhaustive presentation of all these research results and also others that we didn't mention here.…”