Causal Attributions for Poverty in Italy: What Do People Think About Impoverishment

What do people think about becoming poor? Should the poor be blamed? Are community or society mainly responsible for their condition? Or Bad Luck? This paper analyses the causal attributions for Poverty in Italy, in order to better understand people's viewpoint. According to literature, we can detect three main attributions, depending on explaining poverty as ascribable to individual, external-tangible or fatalistic factors. The data analyzed come from a study conducted in 2012, in Italy, which involved around 1000 participants. A Principal Component Analysis has allowed to 'weed-out' the items by identifying three main components. Following analyses have showed significant relations between attributions and factors like sex, age, education level and economic condition.