"One generation has slipped right through our fingers, and we can with a clear conscience designate it as a generation at risk of poverty and inheriting the poverty of their parents," says Mgr. Karol Langstein, head of the social assistance department of the City Office in Banská Bystrica. Great importance will therefore be placed on children when implementing interventions. "Our task is to create opportunities for target groups and to provide high-quality social work to that end," he continues.
At the conference of the Úsměv jako dar association, you spoke eloquently about the connection between poverty and the family environment in which a child grows up. Can you explain this connection in more detail? Most of us had the good fortune of growing up in a family — whether complete or incomplete, problem-free or troubled, foster or otherwise — but the key point was that it was within a family. The family is the basic unit of society, and therefore society should devote appropriate attention to it. Within it unfolds a range of activities and functions that are irreplaceable for the future of every child. The most powerful influence is the behavioral model of parents, which, whether we like it or not, we consciously or unconsciously replicate in many cases. Simply put, children perceive life as it is shaped by their family or even the entire community in which they live and are raised. It is often said that we all start at the same starting line — which we may accept as truth — but the problem may be that each of us has a different course of life experience, a different direction, different obstacles along the way, as well as different physical and mental dispositions. In a word, we are all different, yet each unique. The various social stratifications of the population could be simplified into three societies, which may comprise people living in poverty — the impoverished stratum of the population, people living between poverty and wealth — the majority stratum of the population (for now) — and the wealthy stratum of the population.
The expression "intergenerational transmission of poverty" is used nowadays. What does it mean? There are now at least two generations that grew up in families where no one ever engaged in regular paid employment. These are families living in communities that have no desire to provide children with education but, on the contrary, to involve them as early as possible in the process of increasing income in the form of receiving benefits for material need and supplementary allowances, through various forms of collecting raw materials and materials, and in some cases through begging and committing petty or more serious offenses. This behavior has its rationale — mainly in families living in communities.
The stratum of poor people reacts more impulsively to immediate needs, and this behavior outweighs the effort they would otherwise be willing to invest in changing their mindset and attitudes. Meeting the most basic daily needs in order to survive at all does not require an academic education but rather healthy hands that bring in any kind of income, however small and irregular — what matters is that it comes here and now. This also gives rise to another fundamental aspect of the mindset of the majority of the impoverished population, namely the perception of time. In the value hierarchy of priorities regarding time, what matters for the poor is here and now. Thinking about the future rarely functions. Hunger, an urgent need for finances, and other needs are here and now — so they must be addressed by all means and with the help of all family members, children not excepted. That children would gain more long-term benefits through education and its completion is something this stratum does not address without outside help.
Can you give a concrete example of this kind of approach? If a community has access to a location where forest berries grow in season, the whole family that is able goes to pick these fruits, which they then sell along the way or to a collection point. Often, it is enough to walk past communities during the hours when children should be in school. Of course, this has an emotional effect — when a child is selling a bucket of mushrooms, it sometimes motivates the buyer to purchase the produce because they want to help the child. Fewer buyers would even ask why the child is not in school. We observe this behavior primarily in families living in communities affected by poverty. The paradox is that in every community there is an individual, a family, or a few individuals who profit from poverty through exploitation — usury, small financial services at high interest rates. Such families that are "grazed" become a source of cyclical income in favor of the exploiter. At the same time, the family that found itself in need and borrowed money cannot free itself from debt due to the interest. Redemption from debt then takes on other dimensions — anti-social activity, the sex trade, abuse, and other forms of natural repayment.
So what are the causes of poverty? When a family or community decides to change its mindset, it must identify with the strategies for implementing these changes. If the choice of strategies is too narrow, the effect may be that the problem persists. In order to define the parameters of this task, it is necessary to understand the causes of poverty. David Shipler, author of the book The Working Poor, says that in the USA people are unclear about what causes poverty. The result is that they are unclear about what they should do. Having clarity about the causes of poverty is extremely important. According to Ruby K. Payne, director of the American aha! Process Institute and co-author of the book Bridges Out of Poverty, the causes of poverty can be divided into four groups.
The first concerns individual behavior — the study of the options, choices, behaviors, characteristics, and habits of people living in poverty. Examples include dependence on state support, morality, criminality, single parents, family breakdown, intergenerational character traits, work ethic, determination to succeed, spending habits, drug addiction, mental illness, domestic violence, planning skills, and language proficiency. The next category she termed human and social capital in the community — the study of resources available to individuals, communities, and businesses. Again, I will provide examples: discrimination, racism, intellectual capital, social capital, availability of jobs, availability and quality of education, adequate skills, childcare for working families, the decline of middle-class social morality — brain drain, urban and regional planning, and the deterioration of urban neighborhoods. The penultimate cause of poverty is exploitation. The research examines how poor people are exploited simply because they are poor. Typical examples include the drug trade, usury, purchasing on credit, gambling, temporary work, the sex trade, fraud, high-interest loan providers, or businesses demanding a fast pace of work for low pay. Another important argument for poverty is the economic and political structure — the study of economic, political, and social strategies at the international, national, and local level. I will again add examples: discrimination, racism, globalization, corporate influence on legislation, deindustrialization, job losses, reduced union influence, high taxation, and disproportionate redistribution.
An individual may obtain a professional education or skills, find employment, and yet still remain poor. This widely known reality is the reason why communities must design strategies that address all four causes of poverty, not just those that concern only two causes. If communities focus only on the first two causes of poverty, the result will be only more poverty. If communities want to progress and achieve sustainability, they must devote attention to all four areas.
Why, then, is little attention paid to the aspects of poverty? The reason I devote attention to all these aspects is simple and pragmatic. Parents of children from a low-stimulation environment expect the school to provide education for their children and do not acknowledge that they themselves should play a role in this process — the first mistake! The school does not have the resources to support outsiders, letting them fall through the cracks while claiming that responsibility lies solely with the parents — another mistake! Society distrusts people living in poverty — an even more significant mistake! The process of change requires a comprehensive approach and understanding.
What needs to be done? To begin with, it is sufficient to devote more attention to poverty, its causes, and its consequences, and to systematically set up interventions aimed at changing mindsets and attitudes. I believe this would reduce the number of truants, the long-term unemployable unemployed, and ultimately the number of children who must leave their biological families due to their parents' inability to care for them.
Pavel Bajer This interview was published in the journal Sociální práce/Sociálná práca, no. 1/2010 Social Work and the Fight Against Poverty.
Photographs used: Archive Peter Senko, Prohuman, 2004