The Uses Of Poverty: The Poor Pay All Social Policy

The Uses of Poverty The Poor Pay All Social Polic

Some twenty years ago Robert K. Merton applied the notion of functional analysis to explain the continuing though maligned existence of the urban political machine: if it continued to exist, perhaps it fulfilled latent - unintended or unrecognized - positive functions. Clearly it did. Merton pointed out how the political machine provided central authority to get things done when a decentralized local government could not act, humanized the services of the impersonal bureaucracy for fearful citizens, offered concrete help (rather than abstract law or justice) to the poor, and otherwise performed services needed or demanded by many people but considered unconventional or even illegal by formal public agencies.

Today, poverty is more maligned than the political machine ever was; yet it, too, is a persistent social phenomenon. Consequently, there may be some merit in applying functional analysis to poverty, in asking whether it also has positive functions that explain its persistence. Merton defined functions as "those observed consequences [of a phenomenon] which make for the adaptation or adjustment of a given [social] system." I shall use a slightly different definition; instead of identifying functions for an entire social system, I shall identify them for the interest groups, socio-economic classes, and other population aggregates with shared values that 'inhabit' a social system. I suspect that in a modern heterogeneous society, few phenomena are functional or dysfunctional for the society as a whole, and that most result in benefits to some groups and costs to others.

Nor are any phenomena indispensable; in most instances, one can suggest what Merton calls "functional alternatives" or equivalents for them, i.e., other social patterns or policies that achieve the same positive functions but avoid the dysfunctions. Associating poverty with positive functions seems at first glance to be unimaginable. Of course, the slumlord and the loan shark are commonly known to profit from the existence of poverty, but they are viewed as evil men, so their activities are classified among the dysfunctions of poverty. However, what is less often recognized, at least by the conventional wisdom, is that poverty also makes possible the existence or expansion of respectable professions and occupations, for example, penology, criminology, social work, and public health.

More recently, the poor have provided jobs for professional and para-professional "poverty warriors," and for journalists and social scientists, this author included, who have supplied the information demanded by the revival of public interest in poverty. Clearly, then, poverty and the poor may well satisfy a number of positive functions for many nonpoor groups in American society. I shall describe thirteen such functions - economic, social and political - that seem to me most significant. The Functions of Poverty First, the existence of poverty ensures that society's "dirty work" will be done. Every society has such work: physically dirty or dangerous, temporary, dead-end and underpaid, undignified and menial jobs.

Society can fill these jobs by paying higher wages than for "clean" work, or it can force people who have no other choice to do the dirty work - and at low wages. In America, poverty functions to provide a low-wage labor pool that is willing - or rather, unable to be unwilling - to perform dirty work at low cost. Indeed, this function of the poor is so important that in some Southern states, welfare payments have been cut off during the summer months when the poor are needed to work in the fields. Moreover, much of the debate about the Negative Income Tax and the Family Assistance Plan [welfare programs] has concerned their impact on the work incentive, by which is actually meant the incentive of the poor to do the needed dirty work if the wages therefrom are no larger than the income grant.

Many economic activities that involve dirty work depend on the poor for their existence: restaurants, hospitals, parts of the garment industry, and "truck farming," among others, could not persist in their present form without the poor. Second, because the poor are required to work at low wages, they subsidize a variety of economic activities that benefit the affluent. For example, domestics subsidize the upper middle and upper classes, making life easier for their employers and freeing affluent women for a variety of professional, cultural, civic and partying activities. Similarly, because the poor pay a higher proportion of their income in property and sales taxes, among others, they subsidize many state and local governmental services that benefit more affluent groups.

In addition, the poor support innovation in medical practice as patients in teaching and research hospitals and as guinea pigs in medical experiments. Third, poverty creates jobs for a number of occupations and professions that serve or "service" the poor, or protect the rest of society from them. As already noted, penology would be minuscule without the poor, as would the police. Other activities and groups that flourish because of the existence of poverty are the numbers game, the sale of heroin and cheap wines and liquors, Pentecostal ministers, faith healers, prostitutes, pawn shops, and the peacetime army, which recruits its enlisted men mainly from among the poor. Fourth, the poor buy goods others do not want and thus prolong the economic usefulness of such goods - day-old bread, fruit and vegetables that otherwise would have to be thrown out, secondhand clothes, and deteriorating automobiles and buildings.

They also provide incomes for doctors, lawyers, teachers, and others who are too old, poorly trained or incompetent to attract more affluent clients. In addition to economic functions, Fifth, the poor perform a number of social functions: they can be identified and punished as alleged or real deviants in order to uphold the legitimacy of conventional norms. To justify the desirability of hard work, thrift, honesty, and monogamy, for example, the defenders of these norms must be able to find people who can be accused of being lazy, spendthrift, dishonest, and promiscuous. Although there is some evidence that the poor are about as moral and law-abiding as anyone else, they are more likely than middle-class transgressors to be caught and punished when they participate in deviant acts.

Moreover, they lack the political and cultural power to correct the stereotypes that other people hold of them and thus continue to be thought of as lazy, spendthrift, etc., by those who need living proof that moral deviance does not pay. Sixth, and conversely, the poor offer vicarious participation to the rest of the population in the uninhibited sexual, alcoholic, and narcotic behavior in which they are alleged to participate and which, being freed from the constraints of affluence, they are often thought to enjoy more than the middle classes. Thus many people, some social scientists included, believe that the poor not only are more given to uninhibited behavior (which may be true, although it is often motivated by despair more than by lack of inhibition) but derive more pleasure from it than affluent people (which research by Lee Rainwater, Walter Miller and others shows to be patently untrue).

However, whether the poor actually have more sex and enjoy it more is irrelevant; so long as middle-class people believe this to be true, they can participate in it vicariously when instances are reported in factual or fictional form. Seventh, the poor also serve a direct cultural function when culture created by or for them is adopted by the more affluent. The rich often collect artifacts from extinct folk cultures of poor people; and almost all Americans listen to the blues, Negro spirituals, and country music, which originated among the Southern poor. Recently they have enjoyed the rock styles that were born, like the Beatles, in the slums, and in the last year, poetry written by ghetto children has become popular in literary circles.

The poor also serve as culture heroes, particularly, of course, to the Left; but the hobo, the cowboy, the hipster, and the mythical prostitute with a heart of gold have performed this function for a variety of groups. Eighth, poverty helps to guarantee the status of those who are not poor. In every hierarchical society, someone has to be at the bottom; but in American society, in which social mobility is an important goal for many and people need to know where they stand, the poor function as a reliable and relatively permanent measuring rod for status comparisons. This is particularly true for the working class, whose politics is influenced by the need to maintain status distinctions between themselves and the poor, much as the aristocracy must find ways of distinguishing itself from the nouveaux riches.

Ninth, the poor aid the upward mobility of groups just above them in the class hierarchy. Thus a goodly number of Americans have entered the middle class through the profits earned from the provision of goods and services in the slums, including illegal or nonrespectable ones that upper-class and upper-middle-class businessmen shun because of their low prestige. As a result, members of almost every immigrant group have financed their upward mobility by providing slum housing, entertainment, gambling, narcotics, etc., to later arrivals - most recently to Blacks and Puerto Ricans. Tenth, the poor help to keep the aristocracy busy, thus justifying its continued existence. "Society" uses the poor as clients of settlement houses and beneficiaries of charity affairs; indeed, the aristocracy must have the poor to demonstrate its superiority over other elites who devote themselves to earning money.

Eleventh, the poor, being powerless, can be made to absorb the costs of change and growth in American society. During the nineteenth century, they did the backbreaking work that built the cities; today, they are pushed out of their neighborhoods to make room for "progress. Urban renewal projects to hold middle-class taxpayers in the city and expressways to enable suburbanites to commute downtown have typically been located in poor neighborhoods, since no other group will allow itself to be displaced. Moreover, the costs of the industrialization of agriculture and the human toll of wars like Vietnam have largely been borne by the poor, who serve as foot soldiers and laborers. Twelfth, the poor facilitate and stabilize the American political process. Because they vote and participate in politics less than other groups, the political system can be more easily controlled or ignored, and they provide a stable, captive voting bloc that often leans Democratic, thus securing political loyalty and votes for certain parties. Finally, thirteenth, the role of the poor in upholding conventional norms (see the fifth point, above) also has political significance, as it sustains narratives that portray the poor as morally deficient, thereby justifying existing social and economic arrangements.

Paper For Above instruction

Herbert J. Gans's seminal article, "The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All," offers a provocative analysis of the persistence of poverty in American society through a functionalist lens. By examining the societal roles that poverty and the impoverished population play, Gans challenges conventional notions that view poverty solely as a social flaw or dysfunction. Instead, he presents a nuanced perspective suggesting that poverty fulfills numerous positive functions for various interest groups, socio-economic classes, and societal institutions, thereby contributing to the stability and continuity of the social order.

One of the primary assertions Gans makes is that poverty sustains the "dirty work" necessary for society’s functioning—dangerous, Menial, or unappealing jobs that require low wages and are often avoided by more affluent individuals. The existence of a low-wage, disposable labor pool of the poor ensures that essential sectors such as agriculture, retail, and sanitation can operate efficiently. This function is reinforced by societal policies, such as seasonal welfare cutoff in southern states to mobilize the poor for agricultural labor. Additionally, the poor subsidize various economic activities beneficial to the upper classes—domestic servants aiding affluent households, and their taxes indirectly supporting public services that favor wealthier populations.

Furthermore, Gans discusses how poverty creates and sustains employment opportunities for occupations that serve or police the impoverished, including social workers, law enforcement, and penologists. These roles are integral to managing societal fears of crime and deviance stemming from poverty. The social functions extend to the consumption patterns of the poor, who buy goods considered undesirable or secondhand, thus prolonging the lifespan of goods and supporting industries such as thrift stores, secondhand markets, and auto repair services.

Beyond economic roles, Gans explores social functions of poverty related to social control. Specifically, poverty allows society to identify, stigmatize, and punish deviants, thus reinforcing moral standards and validating social norms related to hard work, thrift, and morality. Interestingly, the poor also serve a vicarious cultural role, exemplified by their influence on popular music, arts, and cultural symbols that are appropriated by the more affluent. Blues, spirituals, and folk culture originating among the poor have become valuable cultural commodities for mainstream America.

Poverty also plays a hierarchical role, maintaining status boundaries by providing a perceived fixed point of comparison, thus helping to stabilize social stratification. Conversely, the poor are instrumental in upward mobility for groups occupying slightly higher social strata, who profit from engaging with or providing services to the impoverished communities. These interactions contribute to the economic ascent of various immigrant and minority groups, reinforcing the interconnectedness of social classes while maintaining the economic advantage of the upper classes.

Furthermore, Gans highlights the political functions of poverty, emphasizing the role of poor voters as a reliable Democratic constituency that enables political parties to maintain influence and stability. The portrayal of the poor as morally inferior also sustains narratives that justify existing social hierarchies and economic arrangements, perpetuating the status quo through cultural and political mechanisms.

While acknowledging that these functions are largely beneficial to certain societal segments, Gans stresses that these roles are often sustained at the expense of the poor, who face ongoing marginalization and exploitation. He argues that many of these functions could theoretically be replaced by alternative social arrangements, such as automation or better wages for "dirty work," but these alternatives often involve higher societal costs or threaten the privileges of the affluent. Ultimately, Gans's analysis reveals that the persistence of poverty is partly explained by its utility for various powerful groups, ensuring the maintenance of social stability and hierarchy, even as the negative aspects of poverty remain unaddressed.

References

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