Culture of poverty |Part of a series on| |Economic, applied and
development |Social and cultural anthropology| ||This article
includes a list of references, related reading or external
links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline
citations. (July 2010)| The culture of poverty is a social
theory that expands on the cycle of poverty. It attracted
academic and policy attention in the 1960s, but has largely been
discredited by academics around the turn of the century (Goode
and Eames, 1996; Bourgois, 2001; Small M.L., Harding D.J.,
Lamont M., 2010). Although the idea is experiencing a "comeback"
current scholars recognize racism and isolation, rather than the
"values" of the poor as the reason for potentially mal-adaptive
behaviors of the poor. It offers one way to explain why poverty
exists despite anti-poverty programs; critics of the culture of
poverty argument insist that structural factors rather than
individual characteristics better explain the persistence of
poverty (Goode and Eames, 1996