Does Subjective Class Predict the Causal Attribution for Poverty?(Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Social research based on Heider's (3) attribution theory can be generalized to discern four attributions for poverty, these being individualist, structuralist, fatalist (1), (4), and cultural (5), (6). Heider (3) attribution theory discerned between internal and external attribution types. Internal attributions for poverty tend to be individualistic that place blame and responsibility on the individual (4), (6), (7) i.e. the poor. Internal attributions are seen to be causes of poverty made by individual lack of ability, work ethic (lack of), self-motivation (lack of)or laziness. External attributions for poverty according to Feagin (1), are classified under three main schemes. A structural attribution which people externalize responsibility for their own socio-economic state by placing blame on macro-forces as government, public or private institutions (8), fatalistic attributions as bad luck or destiny (1) and cultural factors (5) as the social system, confessions or ethnicity, Normative and empirical type of studies have used a number of variables that are thought to impact attributions. For instance, some studies, examined the effects of life experiences of groups, distinguished by race, class, gender, age, education, religion, and income (10), (13), political affiliation, dominant ideology (8), (9), (10), (11), (12), political and institutional behavior (12), (14), and cognitive biases among different groups (15), (16). In this study, subjective socio-economic class level will be used to understand how youth attribute poverty.