Examining Poverty’s Roots within US Communities

Despite being the wealthiest country on earth, the United States is home to increasingly broad swaths of poverty, with much of it concentrated in urban centers. Poverty, however, has many more dimensions beyond material deprivation. The absence of financial resources is closely linked with deficits in other types of capital, including human capital, social capital, and health capital. Building these other forms of capital, which encompass factors such as education, skills, networks, relationships, and well-being, is essential for individuals to be able to permanently escape poverty.
In this project, we will focus on the social and behavioral dimensions associated with poverty. Poverty is a socially embedded, multidimensional phenomenon associated with social norms, social trust, networks, preferences, access to opportunities and services and political influence. A better understanding of the conditions that produce and sustain poverty requires a detailed empirical analysis of the beliefs and social expectations through which the poor explain their situation, and how these influence their preferences and choices. Our proposed research seeks to provide insights into what makes a community resilient and which behaviors play an important role in enhancing or escaping poverty. We will provide a nationally representative measurement of local beliefs, expectations, norms, preferences, and trust levels among rural and urban poor populations across different areas of the US. This will allow us to gain a unique insight to suggest promising and feasible interventions to moderate or change these social dimensions across different groups and networks. By doing this, our project will generate a new understanding of the social and behavioral dimensions of poverty across different groups and the social factors to that should be targeted in poverty-reduction interventions.