Structural explanations, on the other hand, maintain that it is not the moral
character of the poor that accounts for poverty, but rather, the structural issues
of unequal access to education, nutrition, health care, etc. Institutional opportunities
limit the ability of some members of society to achieve upward mobility no matter how
talented they may be or how hard they work. And ideological justifications exist that
cloud or conceal the structural inequities because it is advantageous for the wealthy to keep
the public believing that the poor are lazy and immoral.
Job deskilling has lead to increasing poverty as the shift from factory and skilled labor
to service position and less skilled labor has resulted in lower wages. Job deskilling
takes place in the high tech fields too.
Thus as it states in the textbook (see p. 292), people who are poor are poor because
they do not work. They do not work, not because they are lazy, but because of reasons
embedded in the social structure: lack of training, lack of transportation, lack of
affordable child care, lack of health care; reasons that are the the responsibility of the
individual person. In spite of the rhetoric of some politicians, the weight of evidence points to society, not the individual, as the "couse" of poverty.
