Cultural Explanations of poverty

Sociologist Max Weber was the first to suggest that it was cultural values that affect how economically successful a person would be. In his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he argued that the Protestant Reformation led to values that drove people toward worldly achievements, a hard work ethic, and saving to accumulate wealth. Others expanded on Weber’s ideas, producing modernization theory and putting forward a process that all nations should follow to become advanced industrial nations. They believed that to reduce poverty, values and attitudes must be changed.


More recently, the 1985 book Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind has been reissued, which claims that Latin American poverty is caused by Catholic values in these countries. [89] Political scientist Samuel Huntington collaborated with Harrison on an edited volume called Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. At the same time, the World Bank began to pick up the theme of cultural explanations, putting millions of dollars into new research and conferences on the subject, and funding projects in poor countries to examine the role of cultural values.


However, a significant number of studies have rejected these explanations. Researchers have gathered evidence that suggest that values are not as deeply ingrained as most proponents of cultural theories have assumed. Interviews with poor people in the United States indicate that most actually accept the dominant values, but simply find it difficult to live up to them in their current circumstance.


Much research has shown that changing economic opportunities explain most of the movement into and out of poverty, as opposed to shifts in values. Additionally there appears to be no general correlation between development and any particular religious beliefs, although the general extent of religious beliefs is somewhat positively correlated with economic performance.