text: But the point of the study is to analyze the thinking of people (different types of Christians, non-Christians, progressives, conservatives) toward poverty. It is a helpful question because we can't actually diagnose or address the real reasons for poverty (which are complex) until we find out the attitudes people hold that prevent our doing so.
  When a significant portion of the population believes that poverty is, for the most part, simply a matter of people not working hard enough, the possibility of complex causes or solutions is ignored. When the problem is only seen as merely an individual one, there's no need for us as a society to bother with it at all.