A culture of poverty phenomena does exist. The work of Durlauf (2011) supports the culture of poverty phenomena through explaining how the theory of poverty whether it pertains to a family, a community, or a larger society all have one thing in common, a cycle of poverty that has been learned and passed down from generation to generation creating poverty traps. Poverty traps hinder the poor from surpassing values, norms, and learned behaviors that cause people to remain in poverty. The cycle of poverty is generated by many different factors, however, it is not defined by socioeconomic status or by ethnicity. There are situations where individuals live under dire circumstances within the lower socioeconomic status, yet are still able to …show more content…
Nonetheless, structural factors interact with and condition individual characteristics. Within the culture of poverty many individuals adapt to a subculture that leaves them feeling marginalized and vulnerable, as well as dependent on the government, non-profit organizations, faith-based groups, and individual residents of the community in order to survive. Since human behavior, social skills, and identity are enabled and constrained by the meaning people give to their actions, individuals unconsciously acquire self-defeating behaviors. Although the burdens of poverty are systemic and imposed on society, children born into poverty are socialized into behaviors and attitudes that perpetuate their inability to escape the underclass. Growing up in poverty, children acquire feelings of inferiority and personal unworthiness that make them feel powerless and oppressed. Prevalent feelings of marginality lead individuals to feel that they do not fit in with the norms of society. In return, society rejects these individuals because of their self-perpetrating cycles of learned behavior and value system that leads to the culture of