Concentrated Disadvantage and Beliefs about the Causes of Poverty: A Multi-Level Analysis

Abstract

Studies of beliefs about social stratification have generally focused on how individual-level factors shape people's explanations of poverty and inequality. In this article, the authors contribute to this literature by adding a community-level measure of “concentrated disadvantage” (poverty and associated conditions) to models predicting support for individualistic (person-centered) and structuralist (system-challenging) beliefs about the causes of poverty. Using data from two Los Angeles County surveys and the 1990 Census, multi-level linear and logistic regression models reveal that higher levels of concentrated disadvantage are associated with increased support for both individualist and structuralist explanations of poverty—a “dual consciousness” pattern the authors attribute to increased exposure to social conditions that simultaneously foster sympathetic and antagonistic attitudes toward the poor. These findings add useful information to our knowledge of stratification beliefs and contribute to a growing body of studies showing that “place-level” factors can be important determinants of beliefs and attitudes net of individual-level covariates.