Murnizam Halik
Universiti Malaysia Sabah, and University of Exeter, UK and
Paul Webley
School of Oriental and African Studies and University of Exeter, UK
Abstract
The aim of this research was to explore Malaysian schoolchildren’s 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. In line with other research, 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.
Keywords: Adolescent perception; understanding of poverty; attribution for poverty.
Corresponding author. School of Psychology and Social Work, University Malaysia Sabah,
Locked Bag 2073, 88999, Sabah, Malaysia
E-mail addres s: mzam@ums.edu.my
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Introduction
There have been a large number of studies on children and adolescents’ understanding of economic concepts (see Webley, 2005, for a recent review), some of which have focused on children’s understanding of poverty. This research investigates adolescents’ view of poverty and the poor in rural areas in Malaysia.
Studies of adolescents’ view of poverty have mostly focused on their attributions for poverty, that is, the nature of their causal explanations. Attribution studies mainly focus on perceived causes rather than the actual causes (Singh, 1989). The significant contributions by cognitive-development theorists allow us to appreciate how the children construct their ideas about social and economic concepts, from one stage to another. The study of children’s understanding of economic concepts such as poverty however should be extended beyond the domain of cognitive-development theory. Berti and Bombi (1988) suggested that while children, irrespective of social class, may reach the same cognitive stage suitable to their age, this does not mean that the content of their responses would be similar. Thus they suggested that following up these differences may be particularly useful in sociology or social psychology.
Attribution of Poverty among Adolescents
The seminal work in the area of attribution of poverty is that of Feagin (1972). He identified three broad categories of attribution among Americans: individualistic, structural and fatalistic. He found that Americans tend to favour individualistic explanations for poverty
(for example, that people are poor because they are lazy or because they lack motivation and drive).
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Furnham (1982) in UK was the first to study adolescents’ attribution of poverty, using the scale that Feagin had developed. The results were as expected: public schoolboys favoured individualistic attributions whereas comprehensive schoolboys in general endorsed structural explanations. Payne and Furnham (1985) conducted a replication of this among secondary school pupils in Barbados and Dominica. Respondents from both countries preferred societal to individualistic and fatalistic explanations. Contrary to their hypothesis, they found that Barbadian (who were better off economically) students rated societal explanations as being more important than their Dominican peers.
A wide ranging cross cultural study on children’s economic socialisation was conducted and published in 1990. The sample was drawn from 10 countries among 8, 11 and
14 year old children from middle class backgrounds. Overall, the structure found among children in these studies is similar to the three attribution structure as proposed by Feagin
(1972). Aside from the French sample (Roland-Lévy, 1990) who attribute poverty to structural causes, children from Denmark (Lyck, 1990), Algeria (Roland-Lévy, 1990), Austria
(Kirchler & Prahe, 1990), United States (Harrah & Friedman, 1990), Yugoslavia (Zabukovec
& Polic, 1990) and Poland (Wosinski & Pietras, 1990) generally attribute poverty to individualistic factors. The children’s most common responses concerned lack of effort, laziness or not being hard working. Chafel (1997) review on children’s conceptions of poverty suggested that equity (i.e. effort, education, intelligence, work) is increasingly mentioned with age. Additionally, the ideas of older children resemble adult conception compared to the younger children.
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Finally, the work by Bonn, Earle, Lea and Webley (1999) in South Africa provided a more comprehensive insight on the perception of poverty among Tswana children in semiurban, urban and rural settings. When asked about their understanding of poverty, five of the most common responses were having no money, lacking everything, to have no food, suffering and being unemployed. Respondents attributed poverty to unemployment, no money, God’s will and lack of education. The study also looked at how age and location influenced the complexity of the explanations for poverty. Age had a major impact on this whereas location was less significant.
Whilst these studies, and others not mentioned here, provide a helpful picture of adolescents’ understanding of poverty, they do have a number of limitations, some of which have been highlighted by Shek (2002). He pointed out that most studies have been conducted using young adults and college students and that most were conducted in western societies.
He also claimed that the attribution for poverty scales used in most studies were not always reliable or valid. We would also point out that nearly all studies investigate children’s understanding of poverty in general rather than focusing on a specific type of poverty that might be of more relevance to participants, such as inner-city poverty or rural poverty.
So this research aims to extend our existing knowledge of children’s and adolescents’ understanding of poverty in three main ways. First, in addition to examining their understanding of the causes of poverty, our respondents were questioned about who should be responsible for helping the poor and in what ways they should help. Second, while most studies (e.g. Furnham, 1982, Payne & Furnham, 1985, Shek, 2002) have tried to explore children’s and adolescents’ understanding of poverty using predefined scales and quantitative methods, this study combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Third, our sample
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was not from a western society, but is very unusual in being drawn from a rural area (Sabah,
Malaysia) in an eastern society.
The following research questions guided the present research. (1) What do rural
Malaysian adolescents understand by poverty? (2) What do these adolescents believe are the causes of poverty? (3) Who do they believe should be responsible for assisting the poor? (4)
What do they believe should be done to help the poor?
Method
Sample and locations
Four sample groups of school children were drawn from urban and rural settings in
Sabah, Malaysia. There were 78 children from two age groups of 12-13 years old and 15-16 years old. The exact breakdown is shown in Table 1. The rural sample comes from two poor districts, 85 and 105 miles respectively from Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of Sabah. The urban sample resides in low cost flats meant for those who earn below the minimum income level, in Kota Kinabalu. The estimated population size of Kota Kinabalu is 350,000.
-Table 1 here-
For the purpose of anonymity and analysis, the respondents were coded as follows:
Ry School children from rural areas, aged 12-13 years old
Ro School children from rural areas, aged 15-16 years old
Uy School children from urban area, aged 12-13 years old
Uo School children from urban area, aged 15-16 years old
Thus the quotations below are identified with these codes: the first number indicates the number of each respondent and the second number is the sentence number on the transcript.
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Interviewers and interview questions
All interviews were conducted individually in Malay by five interviewers. A training session was conducted to brief them on the objectives of the research, how to conduct interviews and on specific aspects of the interview questions.
The interviews
The interviews were conducted during the weekend. Most respondents were scattered around the area in locations such as the playground and the football field. In order to minimise the problems of recruitment, a few children were paid as introducers and asked to identify respondents.
The interview locations depended on where children were met and where they felt comfortable being interviewed. We started the interview by asking them general questions about themselves. Once we felt that they were comfortable, we informed them about the purpose of the interview and that there were no right or wrong answers. During the interview, we tried to solicit further clarification or answers without trying to be too demanding. Some respondents provided long answers or a few answers after prompting while the rest offered single sentence responses. For instance, if a respondent supplied a single sentence response, the prompt would be ‘ what do you mean by … ’ and if they paused after giving an answer, we would ask ‘ is there anything else you want to add?
’ and proceed to the next question after we were satisfied that they had nothing to add. The interview sessions ranged from 10 to 25 minutes.
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The data were analysed using Grounded Theory Methodology as proposed by Glaser and Strauss (1968). The transcript was originally in Malaysian language and translated into
English by the first author. In terms of coding the responses for quantitative analysis, we arranged them into categories based on the qualitative analysis.
Results
What do you understand by poverty?
The respondents came up with various types of responses when posed with this question. There were 5 basic categories of responses: economic, material, situational, structural and fatalistic. These are described and discussed below.
The most frequent answer, given by almost half of the respondents, is that poverty is economic in nature. More specifically, it concerns the lack of means and resources needed in order to be part of society, like ‘normal people’. According to the adolescents the economic factors are money, income, affordability (in terms of purchasing power and support schooling needs) and standard of living.
What I understand about poverty is that the poor cannot buy certain things because they don’t have money (Ry26-1).
Normally they don’t have that much money or maybe no money at all. They can’t afford to get money and things they want. Maybe their parents and family don’t get paid that much (Uy16-1).
A situation where people are unable to live in a comfortable situation, they can’t afford to get other needs like other people (Ro14-1).
When they want something, they can’t afford it. In our situation, there are a lot of my friends who are having similar problems, we cannot buy reference books. If I can’t get a book, I will still put an effort to get it (Ry10-1).
Lacking in material aspects is the second most common answer provided by the respondents. Respondents from all groups were quite consistent in what they described as materials aspects, such as basic needs (food, clothing and housing) and assets. While what is
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categorised as a basic need in rural areas may be different from urban areas, all respondents refer to basic needs such as food, clothing and housing. A number of respondents even provided graphic descriptions of what they meant by lacking in materials. It is also important to point out that lack of food does not equate to starvation, and in fact not a single respondent mentioned starvation as an indicator of poverty.
Their house is in bad condition, nothing in their house, like no chairs, mattress, wardrobe, no proper cooking space, they cook using firewood, they don’t even have enough garments (Ry6-4).
For these people, their house is not attractive, I mean it’s made of wood. And then, they don’t have luxurious things inside their house, like those who cannot afford it, they cannot buy necessary things like TV, fridge. They plant their own food, They don’t have luxurious clothing like those in the cities (Ro3-1).
Besides that poverty could mean the poor living condition they have, such as the houses are not in good condition. Sometimes poverty can be associated with their clothing and food, the poor always don’t have enough to eat, and always look unkempt
(Uo2-1).
Situational aspects of poverty were also reported by the respondents. The respondents used the word difficult, in difficulty and hard interchangeably with poverty. The situational description normally describes the general situation that the poor lived in. Poverty also is the end result of those who lacked education (Ro4-1) or simply those who did not have education
(Uy4-1).
Poverty to a small number of respondents is the product of structural factors. It refers to those who did not have a job or work in low paying jobs such as farmers and labourers
(Ro9-1). Besides, people can be considered as poor because they don’t have electricity and road access (Ro3-1).
Finally, a small number of respondents (only the younger school children from the urban area) described poverty as the situation of those who experienced misfortune such as orphans or victim of natural disaster such as fire and flood.
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Why are there poor people?
There are four main reasons, according to the adolescents, why there are poor people.
These reasons can be categorised as individualistic, structural, fatalistic and ‘other’.
Three of the most frequently quoted individualistic explanations for why people are poor are that they lack effort or do not work hard, laziness, and the attitudes of the poor. Other reasons are education, unwillingness to change, drinks, drugs, gambling, poor management and negligence. The term lack effort or not working hard , although similar to laziness, suggests that more could be done by the poor to improve their condition.
They lack effort and they are not hard working (Ry5-4).
Maybe they don’t put in enough effort to get jobs (Ry27-4).
In my opinion, they don’t work harder than they need. They work just to get enough to buy food. Just enough (Ro3-4).
I think these people lack effort, they are not hardworking that’s why they are poor
(Uy4-4).
Because they are too far away from being rich, they don’t have that much effort to be rich (Uo15-4).
On the other hand, laziness is a harsher term, and is a kind of accusation for not having the right mentality to improve their situation.
Some of them are maybe just too lazy to do any work (Ry27-4).
Like maybe they don’t want to work, like maybe lazy. So when they work, they do it half-heartedly, they don’t complete their job (Ro1-4).
Besides that, they have a piece of land but are a bit lazy (Ro5-4).
It is because … they are lazy, and don’t want to put in effort to change their condition. To me the poor they just don’t want to listen to what other people say when it comes to making changes and developing themselves (Uo10-4).
Another common response provided by the respondents is the attitude of the poor.
They viewed the poor as not having the right attitude when looking for jobs or working. Only older respondents from rural area mentioned the attitudes of the poor when it comes to how the poor view fate.
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Next, maybe the attitude of the poor themselves. The poor always think that it’s their fate that they are born poor, and they will be poor for the rest of their lives. Because of this they do not have the motivation to develop and improve themselves, they don’t go to school and get better education (Ro14-5).
Maybe the family did not try to improve their standard of living. They depend on luck only, they have to put some effort to improve their standard of living. Besides that, the poor surrender to fate, they do not try to improve themselves only accepting what they have right now (Ro15-4).
Education is an interesting factor, which we have categorised as an individualistic explanation. Some respondents, especially those in rural areas, viewed lack of education as a critical factor. Lack of education alone would not lead to poverty but it would mean that the poor lack necessary skills, are limited in terms of their job options or simply could not get a job, which would lead them to poverty. For these respondents, education is the key that would enable the poor to secure a better job.
They have no education; those who have education can work anywhere. They become unemployed, even if they work they can only earn RM100, that’s not much, you can’t buy food (Ry9-4).
And some maybe are not educated, thus they can’t get better jobs. For instance if you are educated you can become a teacher, and you will get better income (Ry21-
4).
Maybe because they are not educated, and because of this they don’t get better jobs, which make them poor (Ro13-4).
Those who are not educated, it’s difficult for them to look for jobs. They can only work as farmers. They work for other people (Ro3-4).
This is probably because when they were young they were not educated, and didn’t get any good or well paid jobs. That’s why they are poor (Uy9-6).
In terms of structural explanations, two of the most common responses given by the respondents are employment and low income. The rest of the explanations categorised as structural were blaming the government, income differences between rural and urban areas, lack of development in rural areas and economic downturn. Employment issues refer to those who are unemployed, lack of job opportunities especially in rural areas and not having a stable job, such as working as a farmer.
They don’t have jobs and so they cannot earn any money and become poor (Ry3-4).
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Father not working or maybe only working as a farmer (Ry4-4).
And there are not enough jobs in the village, other than being farmers (Ro11-4).
Because they do not have stable jobs and income. Sometimes they go to work, sometimes they don’t (Uy10-4).
They are poor maybe because they are jobless, unemployed (Uo14-4).
Low income is another factor often mentioned by the respondents. According to a few of them, no matter how hard the poor work, they don’t get paid that much and, coupled with the number of children that they need to support, this can lead to poverty.
Parents do not have steady income or not enough income to support their families.
Some of them “kais pagi makan pagi, kais petang makan petang 1 ” (Ry14-4)
Poverty doesn’t mean that they don’t put in any effort, they work but they only have a small income (Ry29-1).
Maybe their parents have a low income, and do not have enough to support the family (Uy9-6).
Because they don’t get paid a lot, they don’t have enough money which makes them poor (Uo14-5).
Only a small number of respondents, all among the older respondents, put the blame on the government.
First maybe because of the government’s policy. The government only concentrates on the development of poor people in urban areas, not in rural areas. They neglect the poor in rural areas. The government provide better education in the urban areas.
And it’s not the same here (Ro14-4).
Besides that, the government should provide more many opportunities for the poor people to work (Ro10-4).
Mmm…maybe the government are not aware of the problem (Uo5-4).
Respondents also identified fate as a primary cause of poverty although this was not as frequently mentioned as individualistic and structural explanations of poverty. Fatalistic attributions are more evident among the younger respondents. Furthermore there were clear differences in opinion between rural and urban respondents on the fatalistic causes of poverty.
1 This proverb is about the way chickens scrounge for food by scratching soil for maggots. It is translated as ‘scratch in the morning, for food in the morning, scratch in the afternoon, for food in the afternoon’. The proverb describes how a person works to earn a living for the day and have to start all over again for the next day.
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Among rural respondents, fatalistic causes of poverty are things like being born in a poor family, it being passed down the generations, illness and fate.
Maybe they were born in a poor family (Ry23-4)
Maybe because of their standing. Like when they are rich, it’s because they came from a rich family. And in our place, they are poor because they descended from a poor family, from then until now (Ry10-4).
Maybe it’s because of family problems, like their father becomes ill and cannot work (Ry2-4).
Maybe poverty is passed down from their parents, the first generation is poor and the second generation will be poor too (Ro8-4).
The urban respondents, on the other hand, mentioned misfortune, death and family break up as the cause of poverty.
There are poor people maybe because they were robbed, the house and belongings were robbed (Uy2-4).
Maybe one of their parents passed away (Uo12-5).
Or maybe they’ve lost their parents, maybe they have family problems, where parents separated and the children have no place to live (Uy3-4).
They have family problems, for instance parents have divorced and the children are undecided where to go, either to follow mum or dad. When this happens, children will get confused and may be inclined to do other things, maybe they will quit school and find a job (Uo15-1).
‘Other’ explanations for poverty were basically a combination of various factors that did not fall into any of the categories described above. These were geography, age, land and encouragement.
Besides that they live in rural areas (Ry16-4)
Maybe because they … live far from the city centre (Ry27-4)
Some maybe can’t even work because of old age (Ry13-4).
For those who do not own any land, it is worse as they have to pay for the land rental (Ro1-4)
Some of them have to sell their land to cover their basic expenses (Uy12-6).
Poor people exist because they were … not given encouragement. For example, he wanted to improve himself but nobody was willing to help him (Ro10-4).
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For every cause of poverty mentioned by the respondents, 1 mark was given. For example, if a respondent gave 2 individual causes, 1 structural and no fatalistic or ‘other’ explanations, their score would be 2,1,0,0.
-Table 2 here -
The means for explanations of poverty, as shown in Table 2 above indicate that individualistic attributions are by far the most frequently cited causes of poverty among these adolescents.
A series of two-way between groups ANOVAs were conducted to investigate the effect of age and location on explanations of poverty (individualistic, structural, fatalistic and
‘other’. There was a statistically significant main effect for age on individual attribution
[ F
1,74
=8.603, p =.004] and the effect size was moderate (eta squared=.10). Another significant effect for age was on structural attribution [ F
1,74
=9.557, p =.003], with moderate effect size
(eta squared=.11). Inspection of the mean scores indicated that the older respondents gave more individualistic and structural attributions ( M =1.67, SD =1.04 and M =0.84, SD =.97) compared to the younger group ( M =.98, SD =.84 and M =0.34, SD =.48). This suggests that the older adolescents simply provided more explanations for poverty.
Who should be responsible for helping the poor?
Most of the respondents identified more than one party as responsible for helping the poor. While some answers overlap, basically four parties were identified. These are:
1) Individuals (poor people, themselves and family members, children or parents).
2) The Public (neighbours, relatives, communities or rich people).
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3) NGOs or religious institutions
4) The Government.
Respondents clearly understood that poverty is a big issue and one that could not be solved just by one party alone. The responsibility needed to be shared by more than one party and respondents acknowledged that each group has their own role to play. The numbers of parties that the respondents believed were responsible to help the poor is shown in Table 3.
-Table 3 here-
The means for division of responsibility, as shown in Table 4, indicate that the respondents believed that the government was the most responsible.
-Table 4 here-
A two-way between-groups multivariate analysis of variance was performed to investigate age and location difference in terms of division of responsibility (individuals, public, NGOs and government). There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in terms of the division of responsibility.
In what way should they help?
Having asked who should help the poor, the subsequent question is in what way? Most of the respondents were quite clear about what they expected each party to contribute in order
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to help the poor. Their responses can be categorised into five main categories, donation, education, facilities, psychological and work-related.
Donation
Donation is the most quoted responses provided by all respondents on how to help the poor. They suggested that the public (especially rich people), NGOs and the government could help by giving donations in terms of basic necessities such as food, clothing and occasionally money.
Government can assist by giving food, clothes and basic needs. Neighbours and those who can afford it can help by giving food to the poor (Ry14-7).
The private sector can help by providing welfare and charitable help to the poor, maybe through donations. The public can help too, they can help if they can afford by contributing money to the poor (U01-10).
Besides that, some poor families have rich relatives so the rich should help their poor relatives to improve their conditions (Ro4-7).
Infrastructure, facilities and loans
Respondents indicated that the private sector and especially the government could help by building infrastructure, providing facilities and loans to the poor. This suggestion is more common among the older respondents in rural areas and both age groups in urban areas.
They suggested, among other things, the building of schools, factories, houses, and clinics and providing better road access and water supplies. A small number of respondents, especially in rural areas, suggested that the government could help by giving financial assistance such as loans or subsidies so the farmers could increase their productivity. The respondents from urban areas were keen to suggest the involvement of the welfare department, which was rarely mentioned by the respondents in rural areas.
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Government can help by providing facilities such as electricity, public phones and other things. The private sector maybe can build more clinics, schools and community halls for the villagers (Ry22-7).
The government can help by providing water, electricity and access roads to the
Education village (Ro13-7).
Government could provide basic needs, basic necessities such as water, better living conditions (Uo4-9).
Education is seen by the respondents, especially rural respondents, as a shared responsibility among themselves as the poor and the government. The respondents are forthcoming about their responsibilities, such as going to school and studying hard. They are more willing to accept their responsibility in improving their condition through education.
While they acknowledged their role in improving themselves through education, they were keen for the government to provide financial assistance, such as loans and scholarships. Most respondents are quite aware of the importance of getting financial assistance as for them, education is the key to securing a good job and a better future.
We could help ourselves by studying really hard, then we can get better jobs and get more money (Ry19-7).
Aside from that, ourselves. We must study hard so we can be teachers. We can do light work (Ry30-7)
I can also help myself, by studying very hard and getting a better job one day (Ro11-
6)
If we study hard, we can achieve our ambition (Uy5-9)
By giving scholarships to the school children, this can help poor parents with their children’s school fees (Ry11-7).
The government can provide scholarships to students who are poor (Ro9-7).
Government can help by giving scholarships to poor children (Uo14-11).
Psychological
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Respondents admitted that psychological aspects are equally important in improving their condition. Rural respondents are keen to stress the importance of support and motivation from individuals, public and the government in terms of education or ways to overcome poverty. Another psychological aspect is the attitude of the poor. The respondents believed that the poor should be more independent, become more hardworking and not give up easily when looking for a better job opportunity.
Besides that the poor themselves must be willing to change their attitude and be competitive so they won’t be left behind (Ry22-6).
Parents can help by giving the children encouragement to study harder, giving them motivation so they become successful people in the future (Ry24-7).
Maybe neighbours and friends can encourage them as well (Ro10-7).
To me the poor themselves should help themselves, by changing their attitudes – become more hardworking (Ro14-9).
The poor should not give up easily when they can’t get jobs they want (Uo4-9).
Work-Related
The responsibility for improving the situation of the poor is equally shared among the poor and the government. Except for the younger respondents in rural areas who did not really focus on this issue, the rest of the groups believed that the responsibility of individuals is to work hard and get a permanent job. On the other hand, some of them suggested that the government is responsible for providing jobs and creating job opportunities, providing bonuses or giving pay rises to the poor.
We must put more effort while the government can help by providing good jobs to the poor (Ro6-7).
The government can help by providing more job opportunities to the poor (Uy1-7)
Government could help by giving bonuses to poor people, maybe during Christmas,
New Year or Eid (Uo1-10).
The government should create more job opportunities to the poor (Uo3-7).
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A series of two-way between groups ANOVA were conducted to investigate the effect of age and location on suggested ways to help the poor (donation, psychological, facilities, work and education). There was a statistically significant main effect, for age on work-related factor [F
1,74
=8.511, p =.005] with moderate effect size (eta squared=.10). An inspection of the mean scores indicated that the older respondents reported a higher mean ( M =.612, SD=.615) compared to the younger group ( M =.213, SD=.463).
Conclusion and Discussion.
Results from this study showed some interesting similarities and contrasts between the groups on how they viewed poverty and the poor. The respondents are similar in terms of the structure of responses they provide. However, when it comes to the type of responses given, some differences can be seen either based on age or location. Before discussing the implication of their responses, we will summarise some important similarities and differences between the groups.
In terms of similarities, almost all of the adolescents agreed that poverty is basically the lack of certain things, most notably economic means such as money, income or purchasing power. In addition, poverty refers to the lack of materials to meet basic needs, which they identified as clothing, food and housing. Their understanding of poverty is therefore rather similar to the responses found by Bonn et al. (1999) in South Africa.
Secondly, there were three major categories of explanations offered (individualistic, structural and fatalistic), which is very similar to the attribution structure first proposed by
Feagin (1972) and found in most of the literature on attributions for poverty. Whilst
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attribution factors, whether individualistic, structural or fatalistic, may identify the problem or put the blame on someone or something, most respondents put the responsibility on the individuals (blame individuals) and only a small number put the blame on the government
(structural) as the cause(s) of poverty. In contrast to the South African children in Bonn et al’s study, who identified a structural factor (unemployment) as the main cause of poverty, individualistic attributions are quite high is this study. Although unemployment is also mentioned by our respondents it is linked quite strongly with lack of education amongst the poor instead of lack of available jobs.
The respondents believed that although the poor and the government are the most responsible to alleviate poverty, other parties such as the community and private institution should also contribute to improve the situation.
The differences in the groups, not surprisingly, lie in the type of responses they provide. The most visible difference is in terms of their attribution of poverty. The older respondents are more likely to cite the government for causing poverty compared to the younger respondents. Older respondents in both areas also provide more explanations for poverty. While this may not indicate whether the respondents are becoming more individualistic with age as claimed by Chafel (1997), the overall responses in this study suggested that the respondents are increasingly aware of the structural factors have impact on poverty.
Finally, the older adolescent in both areas also suggested more ways to help the poor in work-related issues compared to the younger respondents. This is probably a consequence
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of the fact that older respondents are aware that they are expected to join the workforce in the near future.
Throughout the interviews three major themes continually recurred. These are hard work, education and responsibility.
Hard work is clearly highly valued by the respondents. They believed that one of the causes of poverty is the lack of effort by the poor to improve their situation. A small number of respondents argued that no matter how hard the poor people work, their pay does not reflect their effort. However, the vast majority believed that the poor did not work hard enough to improve their situation. They reasoned that through hard work, either in education or working in their chosen field, they could improve their situation.
Education is also considered as important among the respondents. If they work hard on improving their education level, then they must surely be able to improve their situation.
With education, they believed that they will be able to secure a better paid job, normally with the government. Their simple reasoning is that a better education equals a better job and a stable income. Therefore, education is regarded as the primary route for most of them to get a better job and escape the clutches of poverty. Only one individual considered making use of knowledge from education to improve their situation in the rural area. The rest all favoured a salaried type of work, which indirectly implies that they feel rural areas hold no future for them and that to get out of poverty involves moving to urban areas.
Another recurring theme is that the respondents put the responsibility for improving their situation equally among themselves and their parents. The respondents are aware of their
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current predicament. Even those who admit that their situation is average or good repeatedly stressed the need to work hard and improve their education level so they will be able to get a job and reduce the burden on their family.
In short, this study showed that the school children in both rural and urban areas have a very good understanding of poverty. The younger respondents may lack an ability to link the various factors that contribute to poverty compared to the older respondents, but they equally understand that poverty is a complex phenomena. In addition, they are quite aware of poverty amongst their immediate social environment and what is required from various parties in order to alleviate poverty. This finding concurs with the view of Berti and Bombi
(1988) that children are quite capable of constructing their own understanding of poverty and are both influenced by developmental factors as well as their environment.
In terms of practical implications, this study showed that the route for these adolescents to escape poverty most likely leads in one direction. Education is a ticket for them to seek their fortune elsewhere instead of using it to improve their situation within the area where they live. Although there is no reason to stop these Malay adolescents from looking for a greener pastures in urban areas, they should be made aware at certain stage that an academic education is not the be all and end all and that educational qualifications per se cannot guarantee them a job. This means that the government needs to emphasise the value of nonsalaried jobs and how vocational and other education can help people transform their situation in situ.
The findings in this study suggested that they adolescent do have good understanding about the causes of poverty, responsibility of alleviating poverty and what could be done to
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help the poor. What they do lack is the know-how, the knowledge to exploit the potential and creating their own livelihood in the rural areas. This is where the public, especially the successful locals in the areas could contribute, for example, becoming role-model and open the adolescents’ eyes on the opportunities that could be created in the rural areas.
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References
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Table 1
Breakdown of number of respondents and location
12-13 years old
Rural
Urban
30
17
15-16 years old
15
16
24

Table 2
Means and standard deviation of attribution scores by age
Individualistic
(S.D.)
Structural
(S.D.)
Fatalism
(S.D.)
Others
(S.D.)
12-13 0.98 (0.85) 0.34 (0.48) 0.43 (0.58) 0.15 (0.36)
15-16
Total
1.68 (1.05)
1.26 (0.98)
0.84 (0.97) 0.16 (0.52) 0.23 (0.43)
0.54 (0.75) 0.32 (0.57) 0.18 (0.39)
Table 3
Number of groups mentioned by respondents
Frequenc y
Percent Total
One party
Two parties
Three parties
Four parties
Total
19
44
14
1
78
24.4
56.4
17.9
1.3
100.0
24.4
80.8
98.7
100.0
Table 4
Means and standard deviation of division of responsibility
Mean Std. Deviation
Government
Public
Individuals
NGOs
.86
.50
.46
.14
.35
.50
.50
.35
25