The Layering of Poverty Attribution among Disadvantaged Groups in the Developing World

Abstract

Majority of poverty attribution studies have been on middle class adults from developed countries. Where cross cultural studies were extended to developing countries, samples were of those not experiencing poverty directly. Possibilities of extending generalizations across cultures have therefore been difficult. A modified index was administered on a sample (n=383) from Badia, a low income community in Lagos. The result showed that poverty attribution was understandable in terms of respondents’ Social and Economic Status. However, while the result confirmed earlier findings that disadvantaged persons adopted structural attributions for poverty, it was shown, that the disadvantaged are likely to combine fatalistic and structural attributions in compromise explanations. The result therefore challenges past neglect of fatalistic explanations.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p1993