The class analysis of poverty.

Full Abstract

To understand more fully the nature of poverty it must be viewed as the result, in part, of inherent features of the social system. The author describes four general approaches to explaining poverty: poverty as a result of inherent individual attributes, as the by-product of contingent individual characteristics, as a by-product of social causes, and as a result of inherent properties of the social system. He then elaborates a class exploitation analysis of poverty by explaining how economic oppression, economic exploitation, and class generate a social system in which poverty plays a crucial functional role. The general problem of poverty must be broken down into two subproblems: poverty generated inside exploitative relations (the working poor) and poverty generated by nonexploitative oppression (the underclass). A class analysis of poverty argues that significant numbers of privileged people have a strong, positive material interest in maintaining poverty. Poverty can be reduced in the United States only through popular mobilization of pressure that challenges the power of the dominant classes.

Author information

Author/s: Wright, E O (EO);

Affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706, USA.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Review

Journal: International journal of health services : planning, administration, evaluation (Int J Health Serv), published in UNITED STATES. (Language: eng)

Reference: 1995-; vol 25 (issue 1) : pp 85-100

Dates: Created 1995/05/31; Completed 1995/05/31; Revised 2005/11/16;

PMID: 7729968, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

Comments and Corrections

CommentIn: Int J Health Serv. 1996;26(2):371-9. (PMID: 9132380)

External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.