Theories of Poverty and Anti-Poverty Programs in Community Development

By T. Bradshaw. 50 Years of Community Development, 2007

315 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper I explore how five competing theories of poverty shape anti-poverty strategies. Since most rural community development efforts aim to relieve causes or symptoms of poverty, it makes a difference which theory of poverty is believed to he responsible for the problem being addressed. In this paper five theories of poverty are distilled from the literature. It will be shown that these theories of poverty place its origin from (1) individual deficiencies, (2) cultural belief systems that support subcultures in poverty, (3) political-economic distortions, (4) geographical disparities, or (5) cumulative and circumstantial origins. Then, I show how each theory of poverty finds expression in common policy discussion and community development programs aimed to address the causes of poverty. Building a full understanding of each of these competing theories of poverty shows how they shape different community development approaches. Although no one theory explains all instances of poverty, this paper aims to show how community development practices that address the complex and overlapping sources of poverty more effectively reduce poverty compared to programs that address a single theory.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/06bbfef84c4271a6c6e761b7795f9a343f2d5dee

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In General Health Professions

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Poverty and the varieties of entrepreneurship in the pursuit of prosperity (2020, background): “Not surprisingly, many of the current approaches to poverty reduction focus on personal conversion factors such as the self-help initiatives like microfinance whereby improvements in personal factors are assumed to generally improve life circumstances (Bradshaw, 2007; Banerjee and Duflo, 2007; Naray”
Money in the Mental Lives of the Poor (2018, background): “Much of that work has examined the link between poverty, environmental stressors, and cognitive capacity (Bradshaw, 2007; Evans, 2004; Evans & English, 2002; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994).”