The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

18 THE FREEMAN Januarylessness or old age? . . . Perhapsthere is hardly a single case in thewhole 7,000 where destitution hasresulted from a single cause."But though the table has littlevalue as an effort in quantification,any attempt to name and classifythe causes of poverty does call attentionto how many and variedsuch causes there can be, and tothe difficulty of separating thosethat are an individual's own faultfrom those that are not.An effort to apply objectivestandards is now made by the SocialSecurity Administration andother Federal agencies by classifyingpoor families under "conditionsassociated with poverty."Thus we get comparative tabulationsof incomes of farm and nonfarmfamilies, of white and Negrofamilies, families classified by ageof "head," male head or femalehead, size of family, number ofmembers under 18, educational attainmentof head (years in elementaryschools, high school, orcollege) , employment status ofhead, work experience of head(how many weeks worked or idle),"main reason for not working: illor disabled, keeping house, goingto school, unable to find work,other, 65 years and over"; occupationof longest job of head,number of earners in family; andso on.These classifications, and theirrelative numbers and comparativeincomes, do throw objective lighton the problem, but much still dependson how the results are interpreted.Oriented Toward the futureA provocative thesis has beenput forward by Professor EdwardC. Banfield of Harvard inhis book, The Unheavenly' City.2He divides American society intofour "class cultures": upper, middle,working, and lower classes.These "subcultures," he warns, arenot necessarily determined bypresent economic status, but bythe distinctive psychological orientationof each toward providingfor a more or less distant future.At the most future-oriented endof this scale, the upper-class individualexpects long life, looksforward to the future of his children,grandchildren, even greatgrandchildren,and is concernedalso for the future of such abstractentities as the community,nation, or mankind. He is confidentthat within rather wide limits hecan, if he exerts himself to do so,shape the future to accord withhis purposes. He therefore hasstrong incentives to "invest" inthe improvement of the futuresituation - i. e., to sacrifice somepresent satisfaction in the expectationof enabling someone (him-2 Boston: Little Brown, 1970.