Psychological distress among college youth as a function of family SES: The mediating effect of sense of poverty and the mitigating role of family resources

College

College of Liberal Arts

Department/Unit

Psychology

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology

Volume

8

Issue

2

First Page

95

Last Page

104

Publication Date

1-1-2014

Abstract

Although college provides an opportunity for socioeconomic advancement, poor college youth confront material scarcity and financial problems and are at risk for psychological distress. Yet, distress is a product not only of poverty per se but of a sense of poverty, or a subjective evaluation of one's socioeconomic conditions vis-à-vis life circumstances. Both sense of poverty and psychological distress, however, can be mitigated by collective problem-solving in the family and by the family's social resources. Analysis of data from Filipino college youth (n = 831) shows that the family's inability to meet financial obligations is not directly associated with distress, but indirectly through sense of poverty. Lack of family assets is not a predictor of psychological distress, given that the positive indirect effect through sense of poverty is counteracted by a negative direct effect. Results also show that family problem-solving lessens psychological distress and that adequate access to social resources lessens the negative effect of sense of poverty on distress. Copyright © The Author(s) 2014.

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Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1017/prp.2014.9

Disciplines

Psychology

Keywords

College students—Philippines--Economic conditions; Distress (Psychology); College students—Philippines--Psychology

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