Subjective Perception and Causal Attributions for Poverty in Italy

Abstract

Does a relation between subjective perception of one’s own socioeconomic status and what one believes about impoverishment exist? Are people’s causal attributions for poverty related to their concern for cost of living, their evaluation of economic situation in the last 12 months or prevision for next 12 months? This paper aims at studying these relations in order to better understand people’s viewpoint on what originates poverty. The study considers data collected into a research carried out in 2012, in Italy and that has involved around 1000 participants. A Principal Component Analysis has allowed detecting three main components and the following analyses have showed significant relations between attributions and factors like, e.g., the perception of the personal socioeconomic status and concern for cost of living.