Rags, Riches, and Bootstraps
Beliefs about the Causes of Wealth and Poverty
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2276503 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Katherine B Smith (0000-0003-0312-2284, Lamar University), Kevin B Smith (0000-0003-0424-9367, Lamar University), Lorene H Stone (Lamar University) |
| Year | 1989 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 93-107 |
| Publication date | 1989-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociological Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0253 • E-ISSN: 1533-8525 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1533-8525.1989.tb01513.x |
| OpenAlex | W1909830202 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 84 |
| References cited | 21 |
Specific beliefs pertaining to wealth and poverty emanate from metatheories about socioeconomic inequalities. As cognitions, these metatheories filter social perceptions and generate beliefs about the specific causes of wealth and poverty. Four metatheories coexist in American culture and compete for public support. The four are individualism, culturalism, structuralism/situationalism, and fatalism. Using public opinion data on beliefs about 38 often-mentioned causes of wealth and poverty, the degree of support for each metatheory was determined. Individualism was the metatheory of choice in specifying the causes of poverty, whereas culturalism and individualism vied for superiority in identifying the causes of wealth
Basic needs · Culturalism · Culture of poverty · Economic growth · Economics · Epistemology · Fatalism · Individualism · Metatheory · Political science · Positive economics · Poverty · Social science · Socioeconomic status · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
Explicaciones sobre el origen de la pobreza según área de formación profesional
Development and Validation of A Short Form of the Attitude Toward Poverty Scale
Developing critical consciousness or justifying the system? A qualitative analysis of attributions for poverty and wealth among low-income racial/ethnic minority and immigrant women
A View From the Inside Out
Sociodemographic and Political Correlates of University Students’ Causal Attributions for Poverty
Impact of Meritocratic Beliefs of Newcomers on Creativity
The Cambridge Handbook of the International Psychology of Women
An Attributional Analysis of Reactions to Poverty
Do Middle-Class Students Perceive Poor Women and Poor Men Differently
Sociodemographic and Political Correlates of University Students' Causal Attributions for Poverty
Reliability and Validity of Aids Victim Blaming Scales
Discrimination and anger control as pathways linking socioeconomic disadvantage to allostatic load in midlife
Public beliefs about the black/white socioeconomic status gap
Attributions of Responsibility for Poverty Among Lebanese and Portuguese University Students
Bir Sosyalleşme ve Kişilik Oluşturma Aracı Olarak Sosyal Sınıflar
Pobreza, desigualdad y religión
“Why Don't You Go Down to Wall Street and Get Some Real Crooks?”
Perception of the reasons for living in poverty in Hungary
Buying into Dominant Ideas About Wealth and Poverty
The relationship between meritocratic beliefs and career outcomes
The Associations Between Neoliberal Policies and Attributions for Poverty in 13 Countries
Causal attributions of poverty
Cultural attributions for racial inequality
Agentic selves, agentic stories
Causes and Remedies for Poverty
A New Face of Poverty? Economic Crises and Poverty Discourses
Poverty and Social Policy
Public Attributions for Poverty in Canada
Paradigms, Policies, and People
Too Much Democracy? Exploring the Link between Majoritarian Institutions and Disparities in the American States
The rich—love them or hate them? Divergent implicit and explicit attitudes toward the wealthy
Exploring the Relationships Between Multicultural Training, Racial Attitudes, and Attributions of Poverty Among Graduate Counseling Trainees
Single Welfare Mothers' Resistance
Predicting Support for Welfare Policies
Go It Alone” Poverty in a Small City
So Many People are Struggling”
Pride, Prejudice, and a Dose of Shame
Behavioral Shifts in Students' Awareness and Reactions to the Homeless
One Nation, Underprivileged
Sisphyean Struggles
How Causal Attributions for Income Status Moderate the Link Between Income and Subjective Well‐Being
Linking cause and solution
Whites Aren’t Bad, Asian Americans Are Just Better
Belief in Supernatural Agents and Lay Explanations About the Causes of Poverty
Being and Becoming Poor
Gendered Realities of Poverty
The Role of Race and Birth Place in Welfare Usage among Comparable Women
How can leaders’ perceptions guide policy analysis in an era of governance
Teaching Strategies for Addressing Poverty Awareness With Aspiring Helping Professionals
Cristianismo y pobreza
Psycho-social dimensions of poverty
Poverty Attributions and the Perceived Justice of Income Inequality
Poverty attitudes and their determinants in Lebanon's plural society
Typology of causes of poverty
The Effects of Knowledge about Poverty, Exposure to Poverty and Trust on Policymakers’ Perceptions about Poverty
Making Sense of a Globalizing World
The development of the Systems and Individual Responsibility for Poverty (Sirp) Scale
Race/Ethnicity and Beliefs about Wealth and Poverty
Scaling the Socioeconomic Ladder
Do rich people “deserve” to be rich? Charitable giving, internal attributions of wealth, and judgments of economic deservingness
When Explanations for Poverty Help Explain Social Policy Preferences
Inequality Attribution and Political Participation
Popular Explanations of Poverty
Redistributive Policy Preferences
Does the American Dream Matter for Members of Congress
Locus of Control and Anti‐Immigrant Sentiment in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom
Thinking for Themselves
Social Inequality, State-centered Grievances, and Protest
Working Twice as Hard to Get Half as Far
Get Up, Get Out, and Git Sumthin
Alone in the crowd
The Relationship Between Counselors' Multicultural Counseling Competence and Poverty Beliefs
Religious and Spiritual Beliefs Uniquely Predict Poverty Attributions
Race, Ethnicity, and Lay Explanations of Poverty in the United States
Families in Poverty in the 1990s
Toward A Revised Framework for Examining Beliefs About the Causes of Poverty
Are the Homeless to Blame
The Perception of Poverty and Social Welfare Policies among Undergraduate and Graduate Social Work Students in the United States
American Poverty Cause Beliefs and Structured Inequality Legitimation
Public opinion, prejudice and the racialization of welfare in Canada
Intergenerational Social Mobility and Popular Explanations of Poverty
Determinants of the Attribution of Poverty in Turkey
Monitoring Perceptions of the Causes of Poverty in South Africa
Social position, ideology, and distributive justice
Income and ideology
Inequality
Philadelphia Gentlemen
Explanations of poverty in Australian and American samples
Why are the poor always with us? Explanations for poverty in Britain
Class Structure in the Social Consciousness (International Library of Society)
Five Families
Sociological theories in progress
Attitude prototypes as determinants of attitude–behavior consistency
Cognitive processes in the revision of stereotypic beliefs
Education and Intergroup Attitudes
Whites' Beliefs about Blacks' Opportunity
Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality
Beliefs about the Motivation of the Poor and Attitudes toward Poverty Policy
Reconsidering Ideological Lines
I made It Because of Me
Seeing justice in poverty
| Unique citing works | 84 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,47 |
| Citation span | 1992 - 2026 (35) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 80 |