PERCEPTIONS OF THE CAUSES OF POVERTY COMPARING THREE NATIONAL GROUPS: LEBANON, PORTUGAL, AND SOUTH AFRICA.

This study compared attitudes regarding poverty among South African, Lebanese, and Portuguese college students (n=563) as measured by the individualist, fatalist, and structuralist dimensions of the causes of poverty. The results showed that South African students were more individualist in their explanation of the causes of poverty than their Portuguese (t(1,305)=4.62, p=0.00) and Lebanese (t (1,417)=-2.85, p=0.005) counterparts. Perception of the causes of poverty was more structural than fatalistic or individualistic respectively for the three national groups. All combinatorial pairings failed to show significant differences among the three samples on the structuralist dimension. Regression analysis results showed that the main predictor on the perception of poverty was the country on each of the three dimensions: fatalist, individualist, and structuralist dimensions. The study produced similar factor structure to those conceptualized by Feagin (1972). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]