Explaining poverty : a comparison between perceptions and conditions of poverty in South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this dissertation I explore people's perceptions of the causes of poverty. Literaturereveals that there are three broad theoretical explanations of perceptions of the causes ofpoverty: individualistic explanations, where blame is placed squarely on the poorthemselves; structural explanations, where poverty is blamed on external social andeconomic forces; and fatalistic explanations, which attribute poverty to factors such asbad luck or illness. Furthermore, the findings of studies reviewed showed that theseexplanations interact with socio-economic and demographic variables such as race,geographical location, education, lived poverty index (LPI), living standard measure(LSM) and employment. I therefore critically examine explanations of poverty amongSouth Africans as measured by individualistic, structural and fatalistic dimensions andhow it interacts with the socio-economic and demographic variables.Employing a national representative survey of 3510 adults aged 18 and older conductedby the Human Sciences Research Council between 18 April and 30 May 2006 thefindings of the present study confirmed most of the theoretical arguments cited in theliterature. For instance, South Africans, in general, perceive the causes of poverty instructural terms, but a large proportion of respondents also perceive the causes of povertyin individualistic terms. Access to basic necessities influenced perceptions of the causesof poverty since the poor mostly perceived poverty in structural rather than individualisticterms. White South Africans in contrast to black Africans perceive the causes of povertymostly in individualistic terms. Coloured respondents are the most fatalistic in theirperceptions of the causes of poverty. Further analysis show that respondents living intraditional areas compared to those in urban formal areas are less likely to have structuralperceptions of the causes of poverty. This is a very interesting finding because myexamination on the extent of lived poverty in showed that the urban formal areas have thesmallest proportion of respondents that have gone without basic necessities over the pastyear if contrasted to the traditional, rural formal and urban informal areas. I found thateducation had no significant impact on structural perceptions of the causes of poverty. Inspite of my assessment of the extent of access to basic necessities which revealed that a large proportion of respondents with primary education compared to those with tertiaryeducation go without these basic necessities.In addition, the study found that the relationship between the socio-economic anddemographic variables and the structural, individualistic and fatalistic perceptions of thecauses of poverty is considerably more complex and that it is possible for the race group,level of education, employment status and geographical location of the respondent all tointeract in a multidimensional manner and have an impact on how the causes of povertyis perceived. However, the three linear regressions examining the relationship betweenthe socio-economic and demographic variables and the structural, individualistic andfatalistic perceptions of the causes of poverty should be interpreted with caution becausethe explanatory power of the three regression models is quite weak (as indicated byAdjusted R²).In sum, the present study is extremely relevant in many ways and makes a uniquecontribution at both a methodological and policy level. Methodologically, the findingsshowed that the LPI may contribute to the proposed poverty line suggested for SouthAfrica. As such, the findings offer a valuable message for the country's decision makersabout South Africans' perceptions of the causes of poverty.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University