Perception of the Poor in the US

In hard times, Americans blame the poor, By Alfred Lubrano, February 15, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Last month, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer of South Carolina said that when the government helps the poor, it’s like people feeding stray animals that continually ‘breed.’ And just last week, Colorado state legislator Spencer Swalm said poor people in single-family homes are ‘dysfunctional.’ Both statements riled some Americans from the Piedmont to the Rockies and underscored a widely held belief: In tough times, people are tough on the poor. In an April 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center in Washington, 72 percent agreed with the statement that ‘poor people have become too dependent on government assistance programs.’ That’s up from 69 percent in 2007. ‘The economic downturn has made the middle class less generous toward others,’ said Guy Molyneux, a partner at Hart Research Associates, a Washington firm that researches attitudes toward the poor. ‘People are less supportive of the government helping the poor, because they feel they’re not getting enough help themselves. It’s a divided country, splitting on a fault line: those who think the poor are poor because they don’t try enough, and those who think the poor simply need help…'”