Down but Not out: Resilience in Poor Households

Background and Purpose: A number of studies on poor households describe the difficulties, if not the inability, that poor households face in meeting their needs. The exploratory study presented here was with poor households living in publicly-subsidized houses in Athens, GA. Social Work and Housing and Consumer Economics researchers designed the study to assess how very poor households were coping economically and how they made spending and saving decisions. It was hypothesized that while poor households face uphill tasks in meeting their daily needs, they nevertheless have a sense resilience that helps them cope through these hardships. The study's objectives were to: 1) compare the pattern of relationships between the constructs of economic pressure and personal resilience, 2) assess the correlation between the constructs of economic pressure and personal resilience and 3) compare the means of the constructs of economic pressure and personal resilience. Methods: Posters, letters and word of mouth were used to ask residents to report to their respective community centers on specific dates. Apart from a small participation incentive, child-care services were also offered. A total of 194 surveys were completed with heads of households. The measures in this study are the constructs of economic pressure and a sense of personal resilience. Each construct had seven manifest indicators. Missing data was assumed Missing at Random and was imputed using Multiple Imputation. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine the measurement properties of the Economic Pressure and Sense of Resilience constructs and to assess the correlations and means between the constructs. Structural equation modeling using LISREL 8.0 was used to test the adequacy of the proposed model that included Goodness of Fit statistics. Results: After an initial model that was barely acceptable, a few residuals were allowed to correlate, resulting in a baseline model that had an acceptable fit [÷2 (75, n=194) = 174.940, p < .001, RMSEA=.083(.067; .099), NNFI=0.935, CFI=0.947]. All freely estimated unstandardized parameters were statistically significant (p < .01). The factor loadings suggested that the indicators were strongly related to their respective latent factor. Additionally, the model suggests a moderate relationship between Economic Pressure and Sense of Resilience (0.20). Generally, the higher the economic pressure among the households, the more likely they were to have more resilience. Conclusions and Implications: Building on the strengths perspective, social workers and other professionals working with poor families can continue to build on those areas that these families are doing particularly well in while strengthening other areas of dire need. Greater involvement of poor households in policy and practice decisions that affect them is necessary to hone professional expertise with client strengths. The findings suggest practice with no stigma towards similar populations. Particularly, attention should be given to programs and policies for children from these households so that they do not need to struggle with the same economic depressions as their parents. Resilience in the midst of great need is indeed commendable.