The culture of poverty is both an adaptation and a reaction of the poor to their marginal position in a class-stratified, highly individuated, capitalistic society. It represents an effort to cope with feelings of hopelessness and despair that develop from the realization of the improbability of achieving success in terms of the values and goals of the larger society. Indeed, many of the traits of the culture of poverty can be viewed as attempts at local solutions for problems not met by existing institutions and agencies because the people are not eligible for them, cannot afford them, or area ignorant or suspicious of them. (Lewis, 1968. P. 188)
In this statement, Lewis is acknowledging the separation and isolation of communities within a single society, based on sustained social stratification. He has described the Line. Lewis defines this as a culture because it is expansive in terms of both space and time. Not only does this culture tend to spread across an entire isolated lower and lower middle-class community but also across time. There is an intergenerational transmission of the culture as well as the trauma inherent in this culture. As Lewis (1968, p. 188) notes:
The culture of poverty . . . is not only an adaptation to a set of objective conditions of the larger society. Once it comes into existence, it tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation because of its effect on children.
Lewis (1968, p, 199) concludes with a powerful (and disturbing) statement: “it is easier to eliminate poverty than the culture of poverty.”
It is not just that the culture of poverty is transmitted in a persistent manner from generation to generation–there is also the even more troubling alignment between culture and trauma. As Lewis (1968, p. 188) suggests, there is often a deeply felt trauma associated with the inter-generational transmission: “Most frequently, the culture of poverty develops when a stratified social and economic system is breaking down or is being replaced by another.”
