The idea of 'Cultural Poverty' was given by

Question

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Correct — A, Oscar Lewis. The American anthropologist Oscar Lewis coined the idea of the 'culture of poverty' (rendered here as 'cultural poverty') in works such as Five Families (1959) and La Vida (1966). He argued, from fieldwork among poor Mexican and Puerto Rican families, that the very poor develop a distinctive sub-culture — marked by fatalism, present-time orientation and a sense of marginality — which is transmitted across generations and helps perpetuate their poverty.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Wrong — the Swedish economist is known for Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations (1968), the concept of the 'soft state' and 'circular cumulative causation', not the culture of poverty.  (c) Wrong — the Indian demographer Ashish Bose is remembered for coining the acronym 'BIMARU' (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh) for demographically lagging states, not for a theory of poverty culture.  (d) Wrong — Sen is associated with the capability approach, the entitlement theory of famines (Poverty and Famines, 1981) and human-development thinking, not the culture-of-poverty thesis.

Concept: The 'culture of poverty' is an anthropological thesis holding that persistent poverty produces its own set of values and behaviours that, once internalised, are passed to the next generation and make escape harder. It is a much-debated idea — critics argue it risks 'blaming the poor' for structural deprivation — but the phrase itself is firmly Oscar Lewis's.

State PCS 2020 Q7 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2020 Q7 — Economy PYQ with Answer