Which sociological perspective best describes the effects of poverty?

I would argue that symbolic interactionism is the sociological perspective that best describes the EFFECTS of poverty.  Other perspectives may do a better job of explaining why poverty arises or persists, but symbolic interactionism is best-placed to explain how poverty affects the people who are poor.

The other sociological perspectives, structural functionalism and conflict theory, are better equipped to talk about why people become or remain poor.  These are macro-level theories that are meant to...

I would argue that symbolic interactionism is the sociological perspective that best describes the EFFECTS of poverty.  Other perspectives may do a better job of explaining why poverty arises or persists, but symbolic interactionism is best-placed to explain how poverty affects the people who are poor.

The other sociological perspectives, structural functionalism and conflict theory, are better equipped to talk about why people become or remain poor.  These are macro-level theories that are meant to tell us how society as a whole functions.  For example, conflict theory tells us that (in its view) people become and remain poor because their group has lost the conflict with richer people (and perhaps with those of another race).  They might argue that there is a conflict between white and non-white people and that the non-whites are typically poorer because the whites have won this conflict.  This allows them to divert resources to themselves and to make rules for society that help them and hurt others.  These sorts of perspectives are good at explaining why things happen in society, but they are not so good at helping us to understand how things affect people.

Symbolic interactionism, on the other hand, is a micro-level perspective.  It does not look at large chunks of society.  Instead, it looks at the way individuals interact with and understand their environments.  Symbolic interactionism says that we human beings look at our world and see symbols.  We look, for example, at what other people do and we interpret their actions, telling ourselves what those actions symbolize or mean.  This perspective is all about how people interpret the world.  Therefore, symbolic interactionism would be interested in looking at how poor people interpret their world.  Do they all see themselves as poor?  If so, do they feel oppressed by this feeling?  By contrast, do they actually feel pride or a sense of being somehow morally superior to those who are not poor?  Symbolic interactionists would ask this kind of question because they would want to understand how poor people interpret their poverty.  This makes symbolic interactionism (in my view) the best perspective for understanding the effects of poverty (as opposed to its causes).