A Study on Effect of Poverty From A Life Cycle Perspective
- Focusing on Childhood Poverty -
This study aims to collect longitudinal data for 3 stages, 9 years about effect of poverty on development in childhood, and analysis the data. This study is ...
A Study on Effect of Poverty From A Life Cycle Perspective
- Focusing on Childhood Poverty -
This study aims to collect longitudinal data for 3 stages, 9 years about effect of poverty on development in childhood, and analysis the data. This study is on the third stage. According to life-course perspective, it had collected longitudinal data of 2 cohorts, from aged 3 to aged 11, and from aged 12 to aged 20. And those are combined into a collective longitudinal data about aged 3 to aged 20 based on stacked cohort design. On the detailed project 1, research team analyzed the relationship between poverty and development of adolescents in the period from the 3rd grade of high school to admission to university or getting jobs. The results showed that exposure to poverty in this period and previous period, generally, negatively affects adolescents’ behavioral problems, like internalization problems-depression, anxiety, and withdrawal- and externalization problem-delinquency and so on-. Especially, as the data showed that adolescents in this period have more severe problems than before, interventions on national level and empirical social work level is required. Also this study provided basic data to establish systemic strategies about prevention of negative effects of poverty. On the detailed project 2, it focused on higher grade students on elementary school. In this period, more complicated development happens. Concretely, children show abstract and tangled psychological aspects, feel academic stress as level of difficulty of curriculum is getting higher. Therefore, this study tried to identify the relationship between poverty and development of later childhood (aged 9 to 11). The major research contents are same as follows. First, the development of later childhood in the context of social stratum was studied by literature review. Second, this study analyzed the characteristics of physical growth and psychological development of later childhood based on social stratum. Third, the variables which influence on physical growth and psychological development of children in low-income family. Forth, longitudinal studies to identify the protective factors and risk factors on physical growth and psychological development of children in low-income family were accomplished. To sum up, the research results showed that children in poverty shows negative physical growth and psychological development, and some risk factors and protective factors on those negative developmental outcomes were identified.
The implications and further plans based on major research results are same as to follows. On the detailed project 1, first, it could contribute on the development of social science theories by building and testing the theoretical models about poverty and child development. This study focuses on poverty, social contexts, and child development, so it could widen understanding theoretically and empirically. Second, it overcame limitation of previous studies by longitudinal study design. The longitudinal data and researches of this study could contribute on start of panel studies in social welfare and poverty studying fields. Third, it provides intervention models for children in poverty based on eco-systemic perspective and developmental stages. It contributes to identify relatively important factors, as it could analyze the various mediation-effects of factors of family, school, and community. The results could improve the efficiency of policies and interventions. Forth, it contributes to make guide lines of community-based interventions on child abuse and neglect. Previous studies remained on micro-level, concentrating on abused or neglected child and family. Though, this study tried to empirically identify how poverty of family and community affect on prevalence and types of child abuse, and how child abuse and child development are related each other. With the results, it could raise the necessity of community-based intervention of child abuse, and give guidelines on interventions. Lastly, at the point of education and training, it could contribute to foster the younger researchers who have interests in poverty and child development, and the results will be applied in education.
On the detailed project 2, first, it gives basic knowledge about later children’s physical growth and psychological development by social stratum. By the results of this study, it could be concretely examined the effect of poverty on children’s health and growth. Second, it provides new direction of researches on development of school aged children by social stratum. This study could identify the direct and in-direct effects of poverty on child development. Third, in-depth studies were possible with longitudinal research designs. Forth, it gives basic data to verify the risk factors of children in poverty and to make interventions for them. Fifth, it could provide implications of longitudinal effects of poverty on school aged children. Lastly, this research gave the information about role of poverty and parents on the process of child development.