Most families experience various forms of transformation and crisis in their lives, and the poverty is one of the most significant factor to threaten their daily life. While financial deficiency has been more focused than other measurements to underst...
Most families experience various forms of transformation and crisis in their lives, and the poverty is one of the most significant factor to threaten their daily life. While financial deficiency has been more focused than other measurements to understand poverty for a long time, its multi-dimensional and complex impacts to family lives demands the consideration of new approach.
Based on the ecological perspective, this study approached to low-income family’s poverty through the concept of social exclusion which emphasizes poverty’s dynamic and relational attribute. It also examined their resilience level to show the multi-dimensional outcomes the poverty may cause in the interactions of family environments. Furthermore, this study proposed new advantage to make policy basis for families in poverty by understanding the effects to the relations between poverty and resilience from the concept of family resources.
To be more specific, this study categorized the level of social exclusion into 5 dimensions: work, housing, health, education, and social participation. And family resource are also categorized into two dimensions of ‘internal resources in family’ and ‘external resources in family’ in order to evaluate what effects the two differentiated dimensions produce in between social exclusion and resilience of low-income family.
From August 23, 2012 to September 28, 2012, the data were collected from community welfare centers that manage Individual Development Account (IDA) such as Hope plus Account or Dream stretch Account, and local self-sufficiency centers for recruiting low-income families. Totally, 302 cases were gathered. They were analyzed using diverse methodologies of frequency, percentage, average, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA and the Scheffé test, Fuzzy set, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, Cronbach’s alpha, Confirmatory factor analysis, Second-order confirmatory factor analysis and Structural equation model with SPSS 18.0 and AMOS 19.
The conclusions and policy suggestions from the analysis and discussions are as follows.
1) To examine family resources as the parameter is the most important thing in the research model built to understand causal relations among factors of low-income family’s poverty experiences caused by social exclusion, family resource and resilience, from ecological perspective. The model analysis proved that family resource as the parameter was significant, not only statistically, but also theoretically and practically. Particularly, the effects of external resources in family indicated that the supports from a variety of subjects such as relatives, friends, neighbors and community affected resilience enhancement of low-income household, and therefore external resources in family is to be considered in policy for low-income families. On the other hand, the internal resources in family did not show sufficient statistical significance individually. However, when it was analyzed as one factor with the external resources, it showed the statistical significance, too. Hence, the internal resources in family need to be used as a motivator to support academically further researches with building up additional model and expanding variables, and practically with connecting to social networks.
2) This study examined poverty of low-income family with social exclusion concept by 5 dimensions: work, housing, education, health and social participation. Consequently, differences of social exclusion were identified in the respective dimension, and the level of the exclusion were various by the demographic traits. Particularly, there were significant differences in between age and the form of marital state and family combination. For example, as getting older, they experienced the overlapping of social exclusion in work, education, and health. In case of divorced or single parent family, they experienced the overlapping of social exclusion in housing and health. These results show that policy for low-income families should consider the relations among other various dimensions, since single policy approach like income compensation is not effective enough. Therefore, integrated policies including work, education, housing, and health are necessary to be more comprehensive and systematic.
3) While negative relation was found between social exclusion and family resources, positive relation was found between family resources and resilience. This means that alleviation of low-income family’s social exclusion level can become important intervention for improvement of family’s functioning and strength. And it also means that qualitative improvement of family’s resources that have an effect on promotion of the resilience can be a basis for another practical intervention. Accordingly, if the programs such as IDA and Self-Support for Families are combined with those of family integration education or social-network building, it can be expected that better outcomes will be produced.
In addition to the discussions and analysis above, it is still necessary to be supplemented by further studies with random sampling, operational definition, unification of respondents, and the cross study. Nevertheless, the findings of this study suggest crucial implications to develop comprehensive policies for addressing poverty issues, in that: First, based on the ecological perspective, it proposes another way of strength-based approach in building policies for low-income families. Second, the effects of family resources as a developable and manageable measurement are examined in between social exclusion and resilience.