The Culture of Poverty

Author(s): Oscar Lewis

Source: Scientific American, Vol. 215, No. 4 (October 1966), pp. 19-25
Published by: Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc.
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 SCIENTIFIC
Established 1845 AM E RI CAN October 1966 Volume 215 Number 4

The Culture of Poverty

Does membership In a group that has been poor for generations

constitute belonging to a separate culture? A study of Puerto

Ricans in both Puerto Rico and New York indicates that it does

by Oscar Lewis

overty and the so-called war

P
so other students point to the irreversi­ within nations. Wherever it occurs, its
against it provide a principal bly destructive effects of poverty on in­ practitioners exhibit remarkable simi­
theme for the domestic program dividual character and emphasize the larity in the structure of their families,
of the present Administration. In the corresponding need to keep guidance in interpersonal relations, in spend­
midst of a population that enjoys un­ and control of poverty projects in the ing habits, in their value systems and
exampled material well-being-with the hands of duly constituted authorities. in their orientation in time.
average annual family income exceed­ This clash of viewpoints reflects in
ing $7,000-it is officially acknowledged ot nearly enough is known about
N this
part the infighting for political con­
that some 18 million families, number­ trol of the program between Federal important complex of human
ing more than 50 million individuals, and local officials. The confusion re­ behavior. My own concept of it has
live below the $3,000 "poverty line." sults also from the tendency to focus evolved as my work has progressed and
Toward the improvement of the lot of study and attention on the personality remains subject to amendment by my
these people some $1,600 million of of the individual victim of poverty own further work and that of others.
Federal funds are directly allocated rather than on the slum community and The scarcity of literature on the cul­
through the Office of Economic Oppor­ family and from the consequent failure ture of poverty is a measure of the gap
tunity, and many hundreds of millions to distinguish between poverty and in communication that exists between
of additional dollars flow indirectly what I have called the culture of the very poor and the middle-class per­
through expanded Federal expenditures poverty. sonnel-social scientists, social workers,
in the fields of health, education, wel­ The phrase is a catchy one and is teachers, physicians, priests and others­
fare and urban affairs. used and misused with some frequency who bear the major responsibility for
Along with the increase in activity in the current literature. In my writings carrying out the antipoverty programs.
on behalf of the poor indicated by these it is the label for a specific conceptual Much of the behavior accepted in the
figures there has come a parallel ex­ model that describes in positive terms culture of poverty goes counter to
pansion of publication in the social a subculture of Western society with cherished ideals of the larger society.
sciences on the subject of poverty. The its own structure and rationale, a way In writing about "multiproblem" fam­
new writings advance the same two op­ of life handed on from generation to ilies social scientists thus often stress
posed evaluations of the poor that are generation along family lines. The cul­ their instability, their lack of order,
to be found in literature, in proverbs ture of poverty is not just a matter of direction and organization. Yet, as I
and in popular sayings throughout re­ deprivation or disorganization, a term have observed them, their behavior
corded history. Just as the poor have signifying the absence of something. seems clearly patterned and reasonably
been pronounced blessed, virtuous, up­ It is a culture in the traditional an­ predictable. I am more often struck by
right, serene, independent, honest, kind thropological sense in that it provides the inexorable repetitiousness and the
and happy, so contemporary students human beings with a design for living, iron entrenchment of their lifeways.
stress their great and neglected capacity with a ready-made set of solutions for The concept of the culture of poverty
for self-help, leadership and community human problems, and so serves a signifi­ may help to correct misapprehensions
organization. Conversely, as the poor cant adaptive function. This style of that have ascribed some behavior pat­
have been characterized as shiftless, life transcends national boundaries and terns of ethnic, national or regional
mean, sordid, violent, evil and criminal, regional and rural-urban differences groups as distinctive characteristics. For

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example, a high incidence of common­ cultural constants of the culture of employment history of each adult; fami­
law marriage and of households headed poverty. ly relations; income and expenditure;
by women has been thought to be dis­ My studies of poverty and family complete inventory of household and
tinctive of Negro family life in this coun­ life have centered largely in Mexico. On personal possessions; friendship pat­
try and has been attributed to the Ne­ occasion some of my Mexican friends terns, particularly the compadrazgo, or
gro's historical experience of slavery. In have suggested delicately that I turn godparent, relationship that serves as
actuality it turns out that such house­ to a study of poverty in my own coun­ a kind of informal social security for
holds express essential traits of the cul­ try. As a first step in this direction the children of these families and es­
ture of poverty and are found among di­ I am currently engaged in a study of tablishes special obligations among the
verse peoples in many parts of the Puerto Rican families. Over the past adults; recreational patterns; health and
world and among peoples that have had three years my staff and I have been medical history; politics; religion; world
no history of slavery. Although it is now assembling data on 100 representative view and "cosmopolitanism." Open-end
possible to assert such generalizations, families in four slums of Greater San interviews and psychological tests (such
there is still much to be learned about Juan and some 50 families of their rela­ as the thematic apperception test, the
this difficult and affecting subject. The tives in New York City. Rorschach test and the sentence-com­
absence of intensive anthropological Our methods combine the traditional pletion test) are administered to a sam­
studies of poor families in a wide va­ techniques of sociology, anthropology pling of this population.
riety of national contexts-particularly and psychology. This includes a battery All this work serves to establish the
the lack of such studies in socialist of 19 questionnaires, the administra­ context for dose-range study of a select­
countries-remains a serious handicap tion of which requires 12 hours per in­ ed few families. Because the family is
to the formulation of dependable cross- formant. They cover the residence and a small social system, it lends itself to

WATERFRONT SHACKS of a Puerto Rican slum provide a sharp has found that residents in clearly delineated slum neighhorhoods
contrast to the modern construction that characterizes the pros­ such as this one often have a community sense similar to that
perous parts of San Juan's Santurce district (rear). The author characteristic of villagers in rural areas. Such esprit de corps is

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the holistic approach of anthropology. Rican subcultures. vVe have spent many realization by the members of the mar­
Whole-family studies bridge the gap hours attending family parties, wakes ginal communities in these societies of
between the conceptual extremes of the and baptisms, responding to emergency the improbability of their achieving suc­
culture at one pole and of the individual calls, taking people to the hospita1, get­ cess in terms of the prevailing values
at the other, making possible observa­ ting them out of jail, filling out applica­ and goals. Many of the traits of the cul­
tion of both culture and personality as tions for them, hunting apartments with ture of poverty can be viewed as local,
they are interrelated in real life. In a them, helping them to get jobs or to get spontaneous attempts to meet needs not
large metropolis such as San Juan or on relief. With each member of these served in the case of the poor by the
New York the family is the natural unit families we conduct tape-recorded in­ institutions and agencies of the larger
of study. terviews, taking down their life stories society because the poor are not eligible
Ideally our objective is the naturalis­ and their answers to questions on a wide for such service, cannot afford it or are
tic observation of the life of "our" variety of topics. For the ordering of ignorant and suspicious.
families, with a minimum of interven­ our material we undertake to recon­ Once the culture of poverty has come
tion. Such intensive study, however, struct, by close interrogation, the his­ into existence it tends to perpetuate
necessarily involves the establishment tory of a week or more of consecutive itself. By the time slum children are
of deep personal ties. My assistants in­ days in the lives of each family, and we six or seven they have usually absorbed
clude two Mexicans whose families I observe and record complete days as the basic attitudes and values of their
had shldied; their "Mexican's-eye view" they unfold. The first volume to issue subculture. Thereafter they are psycho­
of the Puerto Rican slum has helped from this study is to be published next logically unready to take full advan­
to point up the similarities and differ­ month under the title of La Vida, a tage of changing conditions or improv­
ences between the Mexican and Puerto Puerto Rican Family in the Cultw'e of ing opportunities that may develop in
Poverty-San Juan and New York (Ran­ their lifetime.
dom House).
[Y studies have identified some 70
'rhere are many poor people in the
N
1 - traits that characterize the culture
world. Indeed, the poverty of the of poverty. The principal ones may
two-thirds of the world's population be described in four dimensions of
who live in the underdeveloped coun­ the system: the relationship between the
tries has been rightly called "the prob­ subculture and the larger society; the
lem of problems." But not all of them nature of the slum community; the na­
by any means live in the culture of ture of the family, and the attitudes,
poverty. For this way of life to come values and character structure of the
into being and flourish it seems clear individual.
that certain preconditions must be met. The disengagement, the nonintegra­
The setting is a cash economy, with tion, of the poor with respect to the
wage labor and production for profit major institutions of society is a crucial
and with a persistently high rate of element in the culture of poverty. It
unemployment and underemployment, reflects the combined effect of a variety
at low wages, for unskilled labor. The of factors including poverty, to begin
society fails to provide social, political with, but also segregation and dis­
and economic organization, on either a crimination, fear, suspicion and apathy
voluntary basis or by government im­ and the development of alternative in­
position, for the low-income population. stitutions and procedures in the slum
There is a bilateral kinship system cen­ community. The people do not belong
tered on the nuclear progenitive family, to labor unions or political parties and
as distinguished from the unilateral ex­ make little use of banks, hospitals, de­
tended kinship system of lineage and partment stores or museums. Such in­
clan. The dominant class asserts a set of volvement as there is in the institutions
values that prizes thrift and the accumu­ of the larger society-in the jails, the
lation of wealth and property, stresses army and the public welfare system­
the possibility of upward mobility and does little to suppress the traits of the
explains low economic status as the re­ culture of poverty. A relief system that
sult of individual personal inadequacy barely keeps people alive perpetuates
and inferiority. rather than eliminates poverty and the
Where these conditions prevail the pervading sense of hopelessness.
way of life that develops among some People in a culture of poverty pro­
of the poor is the culture of poverty. ducc little wealth and receive little
That is why I have described it as a in return. Chronic unemployment and
subculture of the vVestern social order. underemployment, low wages, lack of r

It is both an adaptation and a reaction property, lack of savings, absence of

of the poor to their marginal position food reserves in the home and chronic
in a class-stratified, highly individuated, shortage of cash imprison the family
uncomnl0n among participants in the cuI. capitalistic society. It represents an ef­ and the individual in a vicious circle.
lure of poverty; although gregadous, they fort to cope with feelings of hopeless­ Thus for lack of cash the slum house­
seldom manage to become well organized. ness and despair that arise from the holder makes frequent purchases of

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SAN JUAN SLUM AREA in the Santurce district sprawls along the yond the high.water line and narrow alleyways crisscross the dis·
edge of the tidal inlet (top) that connects the city's harbor with trict. Compared to this area, many of New York's worst slum
San Jose Lake. Rickety buildings have been erected on stilts be· areas, such as the ones that appear below, are nearly middle·class.

EL BARRIO, the original nuclear Latin·American slum area of 99th Street and south of 125th Street in Manhallan, this is the area
Manhallan, occupies the greater part of this aerial photograph. that received the pioneer Puerto Rican immigrants to New York
Lying roughly between Central Park and the East River north of in the early years of this century. Photograph was made in 1961.

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small quantities of food at higher prices. isolated from their surroundings by en­ longing to this subculture. Many primi­
The slum economy turns inward; it closing walls or other physical barriers, tive and preliterate peoples that have
shows a high incidence of pawning of where rents are low and residence is been studied by anthropologists suffer
personal goods, borrowing at usurious stable and where the population consti­ dire poverty attributable to low tech­
rates of interest, informal credit ar­ tutes a distinct ethnic, racial or language nology or thin resources or both. Yet
rangements among neighbors, use of group, the sense of community may ap­ even the simplest of these peoples have
secondhand clothing and furniture. proach that of a village. In Mexico City a high degree of social organization and
There is awareness of middle-class and San Juan such territoriality is en­ a relatively integrated, satisfying and
values. People talk about them and gendered by the scarcity of low-cost self-sufficient culture.
even claim some of them as their own. housing outside of established slum In India the destitute lower-caste
On the whole, however, they do not live areas. In South Africa it is actively en­ peoples-such as the Chamars, the leath­
by them. They will declare that mar­ forced by the apartheid that confines erworkers, and the Bhangis, the sweep­
riage by law, by the church or by both rural migrants to prescribed locations. ers-remain integrated in the larger so­
is the ideal form of marriage, but few The family in the culture of poverty ciety and have their own panchayat
will marry. For men who have no steady does not cherish childhood as a specially institutions of self-govemment. Their
jobs, no property and no prospect of prolonged and protected stage in the panchayats and their extended unilateral
wealth to pass on to their children, who life cycle. Initiation into sex comes kinship systems, or clans, cut across vil­
live in the present without expectations early. With the instability of consensual lage lines, giving them a strong sense
of the future, who want to avoid the marriage the family tends to be mother­ of ideptity and continuity. In my studies
expense and legal difficulties involved centered and tied more closely to the of these peoples I found no culture of
in marriage and divorce, a free union mother's extended family. The female poverty to go with their poverty.
or consensual marriage makes good head of the house is given to authori­ . The Jews of eastern Europe were a
sense. The women, for their part, will tarian rule. In spite of much verbal em­ poor urban people, often confined to
turn down offers of marriage from men phasis on family solidarity, sibling ri­ ghettos. Yet they did not have many
who are likely to be immature, punish­ valry for the limited supply of goods traits of the culture of poverty. They
ing and generally unreliable. They feel and maternal affection is intense. There had a tradition of literacy that placed
that a consensual union gives them is little privacy. great value on leaming; they formed
some of the freedom and flexibility men The individual who grows up in this many voluntary associations and ad­
have. By not giving the fathers of their culture has a strong feeling of fatalism, hered with devotion to the central com­
children legal status as husbands, the helplessness, dependence and inferior­ munity organization around the rabbi,
women have a stronger claim on the ity. These traits, so often remarked in and they had a religion that taught
children. They also maintain exclusive the current literature as characteristic them they were the chosen people.
rights to their own property. of the American Negro, I found equally I would cite also a fourth, somewhat
Along with disengagement from the strong in slum dwellers of Mexico City speculative example of poverty disso­
larger society, there is a hostility to the and San Juan, who are not segregated ciated from the culture of poverty. On
basic institutions of what are regarded or discriminated against as a distinct the basis of limited direct observation
as the dominant classes. There is hatred ethnic or racial group. Other traits in­ in one country-Cuba-and from indi­
of the police, mistrust of government clude a high incidence of weak ego rect evidence, I am inclined to believe
and of those in high positions and a structure, orality and confusion of sex­ the culture of poverty does not exist in
cynicism that extends to the church. ual identification, all reflecting maternal socialist countries. In 1947 I undertook
The culture of poverty thus holds a cer­ deprivation; a strong present-time orien­ a study of a slum in Havana. Recently I
tain potential for protest and for en­ tation with relatively little disposition had an opportunity to revisit the same
trainment in political movements aimed to defer gratification and plan for the slum and some of the same families.
against the existing order. future, and a high tolerance for psy­ The physical aspect of the place had
With its poor housing and overcrowd­ chological pathology of all kinds. There changed little, except for a beautiful
ing, the community of the culture of is widespread belief in male superiority new nursery school. The people were as
poverty is high in gregariousness, but it and among the men a strong preoccu­ poor as before, but I was impressed to
has a minimum of organization beyond pation with machismo, their masculinity. find much less of the feelings of despair
the nuclear and extended family. Occa­ Provincial and local in outlook, with and apathy, so symptomatic of the cul­
sionally slum dwellers come together in little sense of history, these people ture of poverty in the urban slums of
temporary informal groupings; neigh­ know only their own neighborhood and the U. S. The slum was now highly orga­
borhood gangs that cut across slum their own way of life. Usually they do nized, with block committees, educa­
settlements represent a considerable not have the knowledge, the vision or tional committees, party committees.
advance beyond the zero point of the the ideology to see the similarities be­ The people had found a new sense of
continuum I have in mind. It is the low tween their troubles and those of their power and importance in a doctrine that
level of organization that gives the cul­ counterparts elsewhere in the world.. glorified the lower class as the hope of
ture of poverty its marginal and anom­ They are not class-conscious, although humanity, and they were armed. I was
alous quality in our highly organized they are sensitive indeed to symbols of told by one Cuban official that the
society. Most primitive peoples have status. Castro govemment had practically elim­
achieved a higher degree of sociocul­ inated delinquency by giving arms to
tural organization than contemporary he distinction between poverty and the delinquents!
urban slum dwellers. This is not to say T the culture of poverty is basic to the Evidently the Castro regime-revising
that there may not be a sense of com­ model described here. There are numer­ Marx and Engels-did not write off the
munity and esprit de corps in a slum ous examples of poor people whose way so-called lumpenproletariat as an inher­
neighborhood. In fact, where slums are of life I would not characterize as be- ently reactionary and antirevolutionary -

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MOTHER AND DAUGHTER stand together by the door of a run­ more protection of her property rights and surer custody of her
down apartment building on upper Park Avenue_ Because common­ children than formal marriage does, the mother is usually the head
law marriage offers the female participant in the culture of poverty of the household and family ties are to her kin and not the father's_

Hidalgo, Father Morelos, Juarez, Diaz, tai�ly include most social scientists­ minority groups. If it follows that the
Zapata, Carranza and Cardenas. In San tend to concentrate on the negative as­ elimination of physical poverty may not
Juan the names of R{lmon Power, Jose pects of the culture of poverty. They by itself eliminate the culture of pov­
de Diego, Baldorioty de Castro, Ramon attach a minus sign to such traits as erty, then an understanding of the sub­
Betances, Nemesio Canales, Llorens present-time orientation and readiness culture may contribute to the design of
Torres rang no bell; a few could tell to indulge impulses. I do not intend to measures specific to that purpose.
about the late Albizu Campos. For the idealize or romanticize the culture of
lower-income Puerto Rican, however, poverty-"it is easier to praise poverty hat is the future of the culture of
history begins with Munoz Rivera and than to live in it." Yet the positive as­ W poverty? In considering this ques­
ends with his son Munoz Marin. pects of these traits must not be over­ tion one must distinguish between those
The national context can make a big looked. Living in the present may de­ countries in which it represents a rela­
difference in the play of the crucial velop a capacity for spontaneity, for tively small segment of the population
traits of fatalism and hopelessness. the enjoyment of the sensual, which and those in which it constitutes a large
Given the advanced technology, the is often blunted in the middle-class, one. In the U.S. the major solution pro­
high level of literacy, the ali-pervasive future-oriented man. Indeed, I am often posed by social workers dealing with
reach of the media of mass communica­ struck by the analogies that can be the "hard core" poor has been slowly to
tions and the relatively high aspirations drawn between the mores of the very raise their level of living and incorpo­
of ali sectors of the population, even the rich-of the "jet set" and "cafe society" rate them in the middle class. Wherever
poorest and most marginal communities -and the culture of the very poor. Yet possible psychiatric treatment is pre­
of the U.S. must aspire to a larger future it is, on the whole, a comparatively su­ scribed.
than the slum dwellers of Ecuador and perficial culture. There is in it much In underdeveloped countries where
Peru, where the actual possibilities are pathos, suffering and emptiness. It does great masses of people live in the cul­
more limited and where an authoritar­ not provide much support or satisfac­ ture of poverty, such a social-work solu­
ian social order persists in city and tion; its pervading mistrust magnifies tion does not seem feasible. The local
country. Among the 50 million U.S. individual helplessness and isolation. In­ psychiatrists have all they can do to
citizens now more or less officially cer­ deed, poverty of culture is one of the care for their own growing middle class.
tified as poor, I would guess that about crucial traits of the culture of poverty. In those countries the people with a
20 percent live in a culture of poverty. The concept of the culture of poverty culture of poverty may seek a more
The largest numbers in this group are provides a generalization that may help revolutionary solution. By creating basic
made up of Negroes, Puerto Ricans, to unify and explain a number of phe­ structural changes in society, by redis­
Mexicans, American Indians and South­ nomena hitherto viewed as peculiar tributing wealth, by organizing the poor
ern poor whites. In these figures there to certain racial, national or regional and giving them a sense of belonging,
is some reassurance for those concerned groups. Problems we think of as being of power and of leadership, revolutions
because it is much more difficult to und � distinctively our own or distinctively frequently succeed in abolishing some
the culture of poverty than to cure pov­ Negro (or as typifying any other ethnic of the basic characteristics of the culture
erty itself. group) prove to be endemic in countries of poverty even when they do not suc­
Middle-class people-this would cer- where there are no segregated ethnic ceed in curing poverty itself.

25

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