Summary This study examines the differences in perceptions of the causes of poverty of social workersand other middle-class professionals in Israel. A large-scale sample of 647 participants, ofwhom 482 were social workers and 165 middle-class professionals, was employed. Initially,the attitudes of the 482 social workers were analysed. The findings indicated that socialworkers preferred structural over psychological or individualistic explanations. However, acomparison between a matched subset of 165 social workers and the other middle-classprofessionals revealed that the social workers were not unique in their preference forstructural explanations. The difference between the two groups was rather in the tendencyamong social workers to attribute greater importance to psychological causes. Keywords: social workers, poverty, middle classes, Israel Introduction Poverty and social exclusion are issues that have continued to occupy the socialwork profession throughout its history and across the world. Professional orga-nizations (British Association of Social Workers, 1996; National Association ofSocial Workers, 1999; International Federation of Social Workers, 2000), activ-ists and scholars (Parsloe, 1990; Gibelman, 1999; Haynes and White, 1999;Craig, 2002; Payne, 2002) have emphasized social work’s commitment topeople living in poverty and to its role in the alleviation of this social problem.In practice, a major proportion of the service users dealt with by social workers