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Herbert J. Gans. The Uses

Social Policy July/August

of Poverty: The Poor Pay All.

1971: pp.20-24.

Some twenty years ago Robert K. Merton applied the notion of functional analysis to explain the continuing though maligned existence of the urban political machine: if it continued to exist, perhaps it fulfilled latent - unintended or unrecognized - positive funclions. Cleafly it did. Nrerton pointed out how the political machine provided central authority to get things done when a decentralized local govarnment could not act, humanized the services of the impersonal bureaucracy for fearful citizens, offered concrete help (rather than abslract law or justice) to the poor, and otherwise performed services needed or demanded by many people but considered unconventional or even illegal by formal public agencies.

Today, poverty is more maligned than the political machine ever was; yet it, too, is a persistent social phenomenon. Cons€quently, there may be some merit in applying funclional analysis to poverty, in asking whether it also has positive functions that explain its persistence.

Merton defined functions as "those observed consequences [of a phenomenon] which make for the adaptation or adjustment of a given lsocial] system." I shall use a slightly different definition; instead of identifying functions for an entire social system, I shall identify them for the interest groups, socio-economic classes, and other population aggregates with shared values that'inhabit' a social system. I suspect that in a modern heterogeneous society, few phenomena are functional or dysfunctional for the gociety as a whole, and that most result in benefits to some groups and costs to others. Nor are any phenomena indispensable; in most instances, one can suggest what Merton calls "functional alternatives" or equivalents for them, i.e., other social patterns or policies

that achieve the same positive functions but avoid the dysfunctions.

Associating poverty with positive functions seems at firsl glance to be unimaginable. Of course' the slumlord and the loan shark are commonly known to prolit from the existence of poverty, but they are viewed as evil men, so their activities are classified among the dysfunctions of poverty However, what is less often recognized, at least by the conventional wisdom, is that poverty also makes possible the existence or expansion of respectable professions and occupations, for example, penology, criminology, social work, and public heallh. More recently, the poor have provided jobs for professional and para-professional "poverty waffiors," and for journalists and social scienlists, this author included, who have supplied the information demanded by the revival of public interest in poverty.

Clearly, then, poverty and the poor may well satisfy a number oi positive functions for many nonpoor groups in Amerlcan society. I shall describe thirteen such functions - economic, social and political - that seem to me most significant.

The Functions of Poverty First, the existence of poverty ensures that society's "dirty work" will be done. Every society has such work: physically dirty or dangerous, temporary, dead-end and underpaid, undignifed and menialjobs. Society can fill these jobs by paying higher wages than for "clean" work, or it can force people who have no other choice to do lhe difiy work - and at low wages. ln America, poverty functions to provide a low-wage labor pool that is willing - or rather, unable to be unwilling - to perform dirty work at low cost. lndeed, this funciion ofthe poor is so important that in some Southern states, welfare payments have been cut off during the summel months when the poor are needed to work in the fields. Moreover, much of the debate about the Negative lncome Tax and the Family Assislance Plan lwelfare programs] has concerned their impact on the work incentive, by which is actually meant the incentive of the poor to do the needed dirty work if the rryages therefrom are no larger than the income grant. Many economic activities that involve dirty work depend on the poor for their existence: restaurants, hospitals, parts of the garment industry, and "truck farming," among others, could noi persist in their present form without the poor.

Second, because lhe poor are required to work at low wages, they subsidize a variety of economic activilies that benefit the af0uent. For example, domestics subsidize the upper middle and upper classes, making life easier for their employers and freeing affluent women for a variety of professional, cultural, civic and partying activities. Similarly, because the poor pay a higher proportion of their income in plopefty end sales taxes, among olhers, they subsidize many state and local govemmental services that benefit more affluenl groups. ln addition, the poor support innovation in medical practice as patients in teaching and research hospitals and as guinea pigs in medical experiments.

Third, poverty creates jobs for a number of occupations and professions that serve or "service" the poor, or protect the rest of society from them. As already noted, penology would be minuscule without the poor, as would the police. Other activities and groups that flourish bocause of the existence of poverty are the numbers game, the sale of heroin and cheap wines and liquors, Pentecostal ministers, faith healers, prostitutes, pawn shops, and the peacetime army, which recruits its enlisted men mainly from among the poor.

Fourth, the poor buy goods others do not want and thus prolong the economic usefulness of such goods - day-old bread, fruit and vegetables lhat otherwise would have to be thrown out, secondhand clothes, and deteriorating automobiles and buildings. ThBy also provide incomes for doctors, lawyers, teachers, and others who are too old, poorly trained or incompetent to attract more affluent clients.

ln addition to economic functions, the poor perform a number of social functions: Fifth, the poor can be identified and punished as alleged or real deviants in order to uphold the legitimacy of mnventional norms. To jus$ry the desirability of hard work, thrift, honesty, and monogamy, for example, th6 defenders of these norms must be ablg to find people who can be accused of being lazy, spendthrift, dishonest, and promiscuous. Although there is some evidence that the poor are about as moral and law-abiding as anyone else, they are more likely than middle. class transgressors to be caught and punished when they participaie in deviant acls. Moreover, they lack the political and cultural power to correct the storeotypes that other people hold of them and thus continue to be thought of as lazy, spendthrift, etc., by those who need living proof that moral deviance does not pay.

Sixth, and conversely, the poor offer vicarious participation to the rest of the population in the uninhibited sexual, alcoholic, and narcotic behavior in which they are alleged to participate and which, being freed from lhe conslraints of affluence, they are often ihought to enjoy more than the middle classes. Thus many people, some social scientists included, believe that the poor not only are more given to uninhibited behavior (which may be true, although it is often motivated by despair more than by lack of inhibition) but derive more pleasure from it than affluent people (which research by Lee Rainwater, Walter Miller and others shows to be patently untrue). However, whether the poor actually have more sex and enjoy it more is irrelevant; so long as middle-class people believe this to be true, they can participate in it vicariously when lnstances are reported in factual or fictional form.

Seventh, the poor also serve a direct cultural function when culture created by or for them is adopted by the more affluent. The rich often collect artifacts from extinct folk cultures of poor people; and almost all Americans listen to the blues, Negro spirituals, and country music, which originated among the Southem poor. Recently they have enjoyed the rock styles that were born, like the Beatles, in the slums, and in the last year, poetry written by ghetto children has become popular in literary circles. The poor also serve as culture heroes, particularly, of course, to the Left; but the hobo, the cowboy, the hipster, and the mythical prostitute with a heart of gold have performed this lunction for a variety of groupa.

Eighth, poverty helps to guarantee the status of those who are not poor. ln every hierarchical society, someone has to be at the bottom; but in American society, in which social mobility is an important goal for many and people need to know where they stand, the poor function as a reliable and relalively pormanent measuring rod for status comparisons. This is parlicularly true for the

working class, whose politics is influenced by the need to maintain status distinctions between themselves and the poor, much as the aristo,acy must rind ways of distinguishing itserf from the nouveaux iches.

Ntnth, the poor also aid the upwerd mobi,ity of groups just a bove them in the ctass hierarchy. rhus a goodly number of Americans have entered the middle class through the prolits eamed from the provision of goods and services in the slums, including illegal or nonrespectable ones that upper- class and upper-middle-class businessmen shun because of their low prestige. As a result, members of almost every immigrant group have linanced their upward mobility by providing stum housing, enlertainment, gambling, narcotics, etc., to later arrivals - most recently to Blacks and Puerto Ricans.

Tenth, the poor help to keep the aristocracy busy, thus justifying its continued existsnce. 'Society" uses the poor as ctients of settlement houses and beneficiaries of charity affairs; indeed, lhe aristocracy must have the poor to demonstrate its superiority over other elites who devote themselves to earning money.

Eleventh, the poor, being powerless, can be made to absorb the costs of change and groMh in American society. During the nineteenth century, they did the backbreaking work that buill the cities; today, lhey are pushed out of their neighborhoods to make room for 'progress. Urban r€newal pro.iects to hold middle-class taxpayers in the city and expressways to enable suburbanites to commule downtown hava typically been located in poor neighborhoods, since no other group will allow itself to be displaced. For the same reason, universilies, hospitals, and civic centers also expand into land occupied by the poor. The maior costs of the industrialization of agriculture have been bome by the poor, who are push€d off the land without recompense; and they have paid a large share of th€ human cost of the growth of American power overseas, for they have provided many of the foot soldiers for Vietnam and other wars.

Twelfth, the poor facilitate and stabilize the American political process. Because they vote and participate in politics less than other groups, the political system is often free to ignore them. Moreover, since they can rarely support Republicans, they often provide the Democrats with a captive constituenry that has no other place to go. As a result, the Democrats can count on their votes, and be more responsive to volers - for example, the white working class - who might olherwise switch to the Republicans.

Thirteenth, the role of the poor in upholding conventional norms (see lhe fifth point, above) also has a significant political function. An economy based on the ideology of laissez faire requires a deprived population that is allegedly unwilling to work or that can be considered inferior because it must accept charity or welfare in order to survive. Not only does the alleged moral deviancy of the poor reduce the moral pressure on the present political economy to eliminate poverty but socialist alternatives can be made to look quite unattractive if those who will benefit most from them can be described as lazy, spendthrift, dishonest and promiscuous.

The Alternalives I have described thirteen of the more important functions poverty and the poor satisfy in American society, enough to support the tunctionalist thesis that poverty, like any other social phenomenon, survives in part because il is useful to society or some of its parts. This analysis is not inlended to suggest lhat because it is often functional, poverty shou/d exist, or that it must exist. For one thing, poverty has many more dysfunclions that functions; for another, it is possible to suggest functional alternatives.

For example, society's dirty work could be done without poverty, either by automation or by paying "dirty workers" decent wages, Nor is it necessary for the poor to subsidize the many activities they support through their lou/-wage.iobs. This would, however, drive up the costs of these activities, which would result in higher prices to their customers and clients. Similarly, many of the professionals who flourish because of the poor could be given other roles. Social workers could provide counseling lo the affluent, as lhey prefer to do anyway; and the police could devote

themselves to traffic and organized crime. other rores wourd have to be found for badry trained or lncompetent professionals now reregated to serving the poor, and someone erse *outri tare to pay their salaries. Fewer penologists would be employrble, however. And pentecostal religion probabli could not survive without the poor - nor would parts of the second- and third-hand goois market.

' And in many cilies,

nused'housing that Do one else, wents woud then have to be tom down at

public expense.

Alternatives for the cultural functions of the poor could be found more easily and cheaply. lndeed, entertainers, hippies, and adolescents are already serving as the deviants needed to uphold traditional morality and as devotees of orgies to 'staff the fantasies of vicarious participation. The status functions of the poor are anolher matter, ln a hierarchical society, some people must be defined as inferior to everyone else with respect to a variety of attribules, but they need not be poor in lhe absolute sense. One could conceive of a sodety in which the "lower class," though last in the pecking order, received 75 percenl of the median income, rather than 15.40 percent, as is now the case- Needless to say, this would require considerable income redistribution.

The contribution the poor make to the upward mobility of the groups that provide them with goods and services could also be maintained without tho poor's having such low incomes. However, il is true that if the poor were more affluent, they would have access to enough capital to take over the provider role, thus compeiing with and perhaps rejecting the "outsiders." (lndeed, owing in part to antipoverty programs, this is already happening in a number of ghettos, where white storeowners are being replaced by Blacks.) Similarly, if the poor were more affluenl, they would make less willing clients for upper-class philanthropy, although some would still use settlement houses to achieve upward mobility, as they do now. Thus "Society" could continue to run its philanthropic activities.

The political functions of the poor would be more difficult to replace. With increased affluence the poor would probably obtain more political power and be more active politically. With higher incomes and more political power, the poor would be likely to resist paying the costs of growth and change. Of course, it is possible to imagine urban renewal and high\rvay proiects that properly 16imbursed the displaced people, but such projects would lhen become considerably more expensive, and many might never be built. This, in turn, would reduce the comfort and convenience of those who now benefit from urban renewal and expressways. Finalty, hippies could serve also as mor6 deviants to justify the existing political economy - as they already do. Presumably, however, if poyerly were eliminated, there would be fewer attacks on that economy. ln sum, then, many of the functions served by the poor could be replaced if poverty were eliminated, but almost always at higher costs to others, particulady more affluent others. Consequently, a functional analysis must conclude that poverty persists not only because it fulfills a number of positive tunctions but also because many of the tunctional alternatives to poverty would be quite dysfunctional for the affluent membeG of society. A functional analysis thus ultimately arrives at much the same conclusion as radical sociology, except that radical thinkers treat as manifest what I describe as latenl: that social phenomena that are functional for affluent or powerful groups and dysfunctional for poor or powerless ones persist; that when the elimination of such phenomena through functional altematives would generate dysfunctions for the affluent or powerful, they will continue to persist; and thal phenomena like poverty can be eliminated only when they become dysfunctional for the atfluent or powerful, or when the powerless can obtain enough power to change society.