| Summary: | 博士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 社會政策與社會工作學系 === 101 === The researcher has been working to fight poverty for a long time, and therefore has witnessed the disadvantages of poor families living at the bottom of society, especially the children unwillingly deprived of life chances without choice. The life course of disadvantage, deprivation and exclusion causes an effect of weak survival and adaptation. The long-term impact of the effect is that a great many poverty children grow up to be poverty adults who live in intergenerational poverty families assuming the transmission of disadvantage, and consequently vulnerable families cannot break the vicious circle of poverty. The following research questions are raised in this research to deeply explore the phenomenon of intergenerational poverty:
1. How is the intergenerational poverty in Taiwan created? How does it exist?
2. Why were there some families which did not become better off during the period of rapid economic growth in Taiwan but still stayed in poverty?
3. What are the life stories of those poor families? What are the causes of the existence of their family lives?
There are three research purposes raised in this research to explore the creation of intergenerational poverty and how it affects the family members, especially the children in terms of growth course and social opportunity as follows:
1. To examine the life course of poverty children and their families in Taiwan in the process of rapid social change, as well as to explore the impact on the life course of disadvantaged families toward falling into or escaping poverty;
2. To explore the impact on the phenomenon of accumulated disadvantages generated by intergenerational poverty toward the life course of poverty families and their family members under the background of Taiwanese traditional culture and social development;
3. To gather opinions on maintaining the system of family economic security from people who have experienced poverty to be a reference for making Taiwan’s family economic security policy.
The researcher adopts a qualitative research methodology and uses a ‘life course research perspective’ to explore domestic intergenerational poverty. In addition, the researcher selected and interviewed ten families having experienced intergenerational poverty as well as collected research materials of life stories and family history documents of those families through semi-structured in-depth interview to conduct a narrative analysis.
To achieve trustworthiness of the research, the researcher adopts rigorous technology of collecting and analyzing the qualitative data. After the semi-structured in-depth interviews, the recorded narrative representations of the interviewees’ experience of their life stories was transcribed verbatim and coded to facilitate research using the categorical content method of narrative analysis. Meanwhile, the researcher utilizes data analysis software for qualitative research to conduct conceptual analysis. Then, the results of the two analyses were compared to summarize the research findings after the analyses were completed.
It is discovered that there are five key causes of intergenerational poverty based on the analysis of research data, including (1) deprivation of education, (2) poor human capital, (3) unhealthy marriage relationship, (4) inappropriate life roles transition and (5) congenital diseases. In addition, it is also discovered that, among families in intergenerational poverty, grandparent families are the places where reproduce poverty. The government and civil society resources cannot effectively help the families escape poverty, but the corresponding linkage capacities generated within the family can help. Therefore, it is found that the families must play the role of the fourth sector to build up the inner capacities for linking the normal life in contemporary society.
In the process of analyzing research data, the researcher discovered not only the key causes of intergenerational poverty, but also two advantage factors influencing the causes of intergenerational poverty, which are ‘construction of inner capacities’ and ‘parenting capabilities’. These two advantage factors are conceptualized to be ‘family capital’ with reference to the discourses of social capital. It is also found that whether the construction of family capital exists or not crucially affects the causes of intergenerational poverty. Accordingly the concept of family capital as dominant factor on intergenerational poverty is developed.
To fight and govern poverty is an issue both government and some civil organizations have been concerned about in Taiwan society. However, because the work of assisting the poor has been deeply influenced by New Managerialism, it is discovered that institutional escape from poverty initiates intergenerational poverty, and that the process of accumulating disadvantage in families of intergenerational poverty starts in childhood; the existence of ‘child poverty’ forebodes a crisis that the family will fall into intergenerational poverty. Based on the research analysis and findings, the researcher brings forth the solution to the problem of intergenerational poverty, which is that the government should establish a ‘life-course perspective of social policy’ focusing on four types of population in family structure to design a life-course approach. Furthermore, the researcher proposes policy suggestions as follows:
1. Life course policy for child: learning opportunity;
2. Life course policy for youth: social participation;
3. Life course policy for lone-mother: employment account; and
4. Life course policy for senior: old-age pension.
Finally, four suggestions for future research related to intergenerational poverty are proposed as follows in view of the fact that many research-worthy problems are found during the research:
1. Studies on predicting development of persistent intergenerational transmission of poverty;
2. Studies focused on child poverty and intergenerational poverty;
3. Studies on geography of intergenerational poverty; and
4. Quantitative studies on intergenerational poverty.
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