Poverty can be minimized by starting with the structural causes of impoverishment. The factors that causes poverty according to various opinions consists of many kinds, in which the most important one is the economic factor, and there are parties who argues on the existence of other factors such as structural factors, welfare, cultural, human resources, as well as environmental factors. From these factors, we can see that there is a connection amongst those factors that leads to the existence of poverty. Economic factors are the primary reason of the existence of poverty, creating a poor structure that creates impoverishment, which eventually leads to the culture of poverty.
For example, cases in developing countries such as Indonesia where the economic factor is the main instrument in determining the life of the community. The economic factor then spreads to other factors creating a habit of maintaining poverty as something in their everyday life, in other words, leading to the culture of poverty. Recently, we have noticed that Indonesia has started to implement the system of capitalism and industrialization, many lower-income and middle-income workers are employed by factories. On the other hand, the influence of capitalism also makes the poor people fall into deeper impoverishment, and the upper class society becomes more and more wealthier day by day. This situation occurs due to the forming of a structural society, which leads to the incapability of poor people in getting out of poverty. Also, financial issues are one amongst many factors that contributes to poor people still living below the poverty line. Impoverishments occur because the society cannot utilize the revenue sources that are available.
The reason why the society cannot use revenue sources that are available is due to the lack of facilities and infrastructure provided. As an example, to obtain a higher job status than the factory workers and farm laborers, people will need a high educational attainment while the cost of education is quite expensive. For those who can afford to pay tuitions and have enough money, they can easily send their children to receive the highest level of education, and usually they can also easily get a higher position as well. From this illustration, we can see that the poor have enough reasons to stop attending higher level of education which results in building up thoughts that the money spent for education is not seen as money well-spent. They think that they would rather spend their money on daily meals and daily needs to survive. There is also the opinion that by sending their children to higher level education, their children will not turn out as they expect them to be, while their money is already spent on education. Also, there are views in which they believe that from the start they are destined to work as farmers or factory workers, this view keeps them from improving financially and they remain in the same condition generation after generation.
These thoughts then result to some poor people remaining "on the streets" and think that being poor had become hereditary. It ultimately forms a culture of poverty that is often still found in Indonesia. The view of the society on poverty has to be changed, this can happen by providing a welfare state to the society in terms of education, skills given to them, facilities and infrastructure that can assist the society in general. This will then slowly lead to the shifting of mindset on poverty, which stresses the point that poverty is not hereditary, but is a condition that needs to be solved by finding solutions to problems they are facing, instead of running away from it.
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