Single-Parent Families with Disabilities as an Object of Structural Modeling

Abstract

The status of a single-parent family and the upbringing of a child with a disability generate social risks in most countries of the world. The article is aimed at identifying significant factors that determine the limitations of the human capital development possibilities in a single-parent family with disabled children in Kazakhstan. The authors applied the method of sociological survey of respondents in five regions of Kazakhstan. The interview is based on the methodology of international research, based on the allocation of four types of restrictions: direct costs per child, indirect losses of the household, assessment of the opportunity for the parent to find employment, and maintaining of his health. The results of the survey were processed by the method of structural modeling using the PLS-PM model, which includes four dependent variables. Single-parent families estimate the importance of benefits for a direct child costs four times higher than full families since a third of these families live only on transfers. Care allowances are considered by the parent in terms of replacing lost income, but the amount of the benefit is not related to the amount of care for the child. A parent in a single-parent family, more often than in a full one, connects his estimated long-term costs for the child’s future (vocational education) with indirect losses of the family. A statistically significant negative relationship between the available services (public or state-subsidized) for the parent in the field of physiological/ psychological health and his ability to maintain his health was revealed.