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Poierty ofcbildren andyoutb as a contemporaty socialproblem

Conseąuences of children’s growth in poverty conditions

The growth in the world’s research on poverty problems was recorded as signifi-cant in the second half o£ the 20^,h century, particularly in the 60s. Vast debates and dehberations on the concept of poverty, the culture of poverty and social exclusion were held within vańous sociological, anthropological and historical disciplines also affecting social policy. “Different America. Poverty in the United States” by Mi-chael Harrington deserves special attention here. Based on his 7-year research, the author out-lines social yerification referring to ‘the economic sub-world and the waste of social abundance related to all those who do not participate in life and have been banned from the process of social development. A lot was contributed to the early thoughts on social inequalities and multi-aspect problems of poverty by a French historian, Michel Mollat. He gave lectures at the Sorbonne on psychological and social results of poverty. These resulted in his two-volume work entitled ‘Etudes surl’historie de la pauverete’ which was published in 1974. Researching on studies the culture of poverty was also carried out by Oscar Lewis. In his works such as ‘Sanches and his Children’, ‘Naked Life’, ‘The Martinez Family’ he revealed dissimilarity of group behaviours found in poverty societies as a form of deviant actions, which seem to be an inevitable consequence of status of the poor societies inhabiting Mexico, India, Puerto Rico and Cuba. It is worth mentioning that Lewis’s theory was long rejected as it opposed contemporary mental trends which denoted that every individual is be tempted to gain his/her life’s success.

It was already 15 years to follow when the poverty culture theory was finally appreciated even though it still has its critical response. Many researchers in this field claim that the behaviour of the poor as described by Lewis is a universal fea-ture found among all poor groups in modem societies. Studying the wide academic empirical achievement of those times, we may not exclude the economic studies of poverty madę by an American sociologist, David Matz. In his significant work “Deliquency and Drift” the reprint edition, considering socio-cultural aspects and poor societies, he distinguishes 3 concentric spheres: the largest (comprising all the poor according to the relative rule of Iow incomes), a narrower circle (the poor living on social care support and burdened with the mark of morał decay), finally