درک نوجوانان از فقر و فقرا در مناطق روستایی مالزی

The aim of this research was to explore Malaysian adolescents’ perception of poverty and the poor. The data consisted of 79 semi-structured interviews with school children aged 12–13 and 15–16 years old from rural and urban areas in Sabah, Malaysia. According to them, poverty is mainly economic. Their responses about the causes of poverty can be categorised as individualistic, structural, fatalistic and other factors (such as age, geography, land and encouragement). Older respondents from rural and urban areas gave more individualistic and structural attributions compared to the younger respondents. While they believed that government is most responsible to help the poor, other parties such as the poor, public and NGO’s should also work together to alleviate poverty. They suggested that these parties can contribute in terms of donation, infrastructural improvement, education, attitudinal change and job opportunities. Respondents acknowledged that hard work and education are important to improve their standard of living. However, education is regarded as a ticket to seek their fortune elsewhere. These results emphasised the need for the Malay adolescents to learn about not being dependent on the government for employment in order to avoid mass urban migration in the near future.

While there has been a plethora of research in the areas of the economics and sociology of poverty in rural areas, the contribution of psychology has lagged behind. According to Lea, Burgoyne, Jones, and Beer (1997), psychological work in poverty has mainly concentrated on three themes: the impact of poverty on outcomes such as school performance and mental health, psychological factors contributing to poverty and causal attributions for poverty and other attitudes towards the poor. Lever (2005) pointed to some areas where psychologists had contributed to the study of poverty. These studies mainly concerned various groups’ perceptions of poverty; psychological aspects of the culture of poverty; the relationship between certain psychological variables and poverty; psychological variables and experiencing upward social mobility; and studies of the well-being of people living in poverty.