BLAME OR FATE, INDIVIDUAL OR SOCIAL?

Abstract

This paper explores popular explanations of poverty. Based on existing theoretical and empirical studies, four types of reason for poverty are distinguished: (1) individual blame; (2) individual fate; (3) social blame; and (4) social fate. Data from the 1990 European Values Study surveys are used to describe and compare cross-nationally the proportions of people perceiving each of the four explanations as a main reason for people living in poverty. Further, it is explored whether or not differential patterns in these perceptions are related to types of welfare regime as distinguished by several authors. One of the main conclusions is that, contrary to prior evidence from Anglo-Saxon countries only, social blame is the most popular explanation of poverty in nearly all of the twenty countries studied. That is, the majority of people living in industrialized welfare states believe that poverty is the outcome of actions of social actors, rather than the inevitable result of individual or social fate. The idea that the poor are themselves to blame for their situation is on average more popular in Eastern European than in Western European countries, where the idea lost ground from the mid-1970s onwards. There is no relation between popular perceptions of poverty and type of welfare state regime. It is suggested that future research should narrow the focus on the relation between poverty perceptions and types of anti-poverty strategy.