The Impact of Psychological Factors and Religious Adherence on Household’s Dealing with Poverty-Driven Vulnerability Situation: A Critical Discourse on Kelantan and Terengganu

Senadjki Abdelhak,Saidatulakmal Mohd,Jamalludin Sulaiman

doi:10.5539/ass.v8n12p192

Abstract

It is documented that in the households’ experience of vulnerability to poverty, religious and psychological factors have been inextricably but indirectly linked. These factors, according to researchers’ findings, have played a decisive role in enhancing households’ coping capacity in an attempt to ease their vulnerabilities. The same factors however could also have adverse effects on household in their vulnerability to poverty as they may weaken people’s risk-management and coping strategies. This study will attempt to extend the discussion of this issue by an investigation of psychological and religious impact on households’ risk management and coping strategies. In order to understand the dynamics of interrelations between these factors, a study was done in the states of Kelantan and Terengganu in Malaysia. Using a structured socio-economic questionnaire, 302 randomly selected farmers from both the states were tested. The results showed that distress, depression and feeling discouraged dramatically reducing farmers’ monthly income. Also the results indicated that the more the religious farmers are the highest their monthly income is. Instead of being motivated when experiencing stressors, farmers behaved negatively. This was confirmed as the results appointed the existence of a significant and negative relationship between farmers’ psychological situation and their coping strategies. At the same time religious farmers implemented only fewer strategies. But these strategies found to be effective and efficient as their monthly income is higher compared to those who seldom practice religious commitments.

Highlights

Poverty is one of the serious social problems that challenge the security and stabilisation of societies
Using a tukey HSD test, the results in table 1 indicated that most of the selected variables significantly affected households’ monthly income. Those who had felt isolated less than one time during a period of six month found to have no different mean in terms of monthly income from those who had felt isolated twice or more
Results showed that farmers who had not felt discouraged during a period of six months had much higher mean monthly income than those who had felt discouraged twice or more

Summary

Introduction

Poverty is one of the serious social problems that challenge the security and stabilisation of societies. Regardless of the degree of their economic fortunes and development, suffer from this phenomenon and its adverse effects both at the family and community level. Households’ strategies are important elements that determine the level of their poverty. The effectiveness of risk management and coping strategies to insulate households from stressors is determined by many factors: severity and frequency of the shocks or negative event (Kamur & Routray, 2009); Economic condition (Eriksen & Silva, 2009); households’ psychological situation (McCubbin & figley, 1983; Chaudhuri, 2003; Garnefski et al, 2005; Beedell & Rehman, 1999; Goudge et al, 2007; Berry et al, 2009; Hinton and Earnest, 2010) and religious adherence

Results

Discussion

Conclusion