Social perception and attribution of causality for poverty: which is the influence of thinking to myself or to others?

This study analyses how socio-economic categories and the distance from a condition of poverty affect people's beliefs about poverty. The aim of the study is to better understand people's perception and to suggest more adequate and shared interventions. We have analyzed data from more than 2000 questionnaires trying to understand if socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents or the distance perceived from condition of deprivation influence their beliefs about poverty as something originated by individual or external forces. Income, perceived economic status, age, educational level and working condition have been people's characteristics taken into account in our analyses; the perceived distance between respondent and a condition of poverty, on the other hand, has been detected focusing on different levels: respondent's condition (you in a poverty condition); his friends' / acquaintances' condition (your group of reference in a poverty condition); other people (poverty in general). We have also put in relation the outcomes of comparing the effect of different distances between the phenomenon and the respondents and their socio-economic characteristics.