EMPLOYMENT HOPE AS AN EMPOWERMENT PATHWAY TO ECONOMIC SELF-SUFFICIENCY AMONG LOW-INCOME BABY BOOMERS

摘要

This study empirically investigates the relationship among psychological strength traits (i.e., self-esteem, self-efficacy, resilience, and grit), employment hope, and economic self-sufficiency among low-income babyboomers. This study uses 288 low-income babyboomer cases, collected from 26 South Korean social service agencies providing self-sufficiency programs in 2016.The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Blaskovich & Tomaka, 1991), the New General Self-Efficacy Scale (Chen, Gully, & Eden, 2001), the Short Grit Scale (Grit-S) (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009), and the Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC) (Connor & Davidson, 2003) were used to measure personal psychological strength traits, respectively. The Employment Hope Scale by Hong et al. (2013) was used to measure the psychological dimension of self-sufficiency. We measured the economic self-sufficiency using the WEN Economic Self-Sufficiency Scale (ESS; Gowdy & Pearlmutter, 1993).Structural equation model (SEM) was constructed to identify the impact of psychological traits on economic self-sufficiency, with the mediating effect of employment hope. Maximum likelihood (ML) was employed to estimate models, and missing data was treated with Full information maximum likelihood (FIML) method. The current study employed Bootstrapping method to test the mediating effect of employment hope.SEM analysis showed that the effects of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and grit on employment hope are statistically significant, as hypothesized. Subsequently, employment hope is positively associated with economic self-sufficiency.The results of this study imply that psychological traits such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, and grit are important factor of self-sufficiency among low-income babyboomers and motivation and hope for employment mediates the pathway from psychological strength toward economic self-sufficiency.