Subjective Perception and Causal Attributions for Poverty in Italy

Abstract

Does a relation between subjective perception of one's own socioeconomic status and what one believes about impoverishment exist? Are people's causal attributions for poverty related to their concern for cost of living, their evaluation of economic situation in the last 12 months or prevision for next 12 months? This paper aims at studying these relations in order to better understand people's viewpoint on what originates poverty. The study considers data collected into a research carried out in 2012, in Italy and that has involved around 1000 participants. A Principal Component Analysis has allowed detecting three main components and the following analyses have showed significant relations between attributions and factors like, e.g., the perception of the personal socioeconomic status and concern for cost of living.

Psychology, Economic Policy Design, and Implementation: Contributing to the Understanding of Economic Policy Failures in Africa

“…However, they suggested that this contrary finding is an artifact of the sample they used, which is not representative of the general population of Ghana. Despite this contrary finding by Asiedu et al (2013), the general conclusion is congruent with the view that adolescents in resource-poor environments tend to display high external control orientations (Hine et al, 2005;Ige & Nekhwevha, 2014;Nasser, Singhal, & Abouchedid, 2011;Norcia & Rissotto, 2011;Sinha, 1994;Wollie, 2009), which may result from the growing sense of loss of control (Williams, 2008).…”

“…For instance, Williams (2008) has reported that during economic recession, persons affected experience a growing sense of loss of control. In a study among Italian participants, Norcia and Rissotto (2011) further found that persons with a lower income tend to make more external attributions of wealth as opposed to those with high incomes, who make more internal attributions for their prosperity.…”

Atribuciones sobre las causas de la pobreza general e infantil en Argentina

“…En la literatura sobre el tema se verifican diferencias respecto a la terminología utilizada para hacer referencia a las causas de la pobreza (Babjáková et al, 2019). Algunos estudios utilizan el término "percepciones" de las causas de la pobreza (Davids y Gouws, 2013;Niemelä, 2008), otros hacen referencia a las "creencias" acerca de la pobreza (e. g., Hunt, 1996;Tagler y Cozzarelli, 2013) y otros usan el término "atribuciones" de las causas de la pobreza (e. g., Nasser y Abouchedid, 2006;Norcia y Rissotto, 2015). El concepto de atribución ha sido estudiado principalmente desde la psicología social, que se ha enfocado en comprender cómo las personas explican el comportamiento de otros.…”

Causal Attribution for Poverty in Young People: Sociodemographic Characteristics, Religious and Political Beliefs

“…Although this tripartite division has been empirically supported, there is a serious discussion about whether causes can be placed in one of three mutually exclusive categories. Thus, the literature refers to the role of an individual explanation for the causes of poverty, and points out their interaction with other structural factors and explanations (Cozzarelli et al 2001;Small et al 2010;Weiner et al 2011;Norcia et al 2010;Segretin et al 2022).…”

“…All studies focusing on poverty issues also emphasize some aspects or antecedents that have an important role as predictors of causal attributions, such as sociodemographic characteristics and values or beliefs (Lepianka et al 2009). Sociodemographic characteristics such as age, sex or gender, educational level, social class, nationality and country of residence, among others, can affect the causal attribution for poverty (Cozzarelli et al 2001;Norcia et al 2010;Vázquez et al 2018;Bastias et al 2019). Some of the studies show that women are more likely to carry out external attribution or to think that poverty is caused by extrinsic problems (J.D.…”