JNSS 2018, 9(3-4):93-100 | DOI: 10.32725/jnss.2018.010

The working poor and stress

Zuzana Řimnáčová^*, Alena Kajanová, Stanislav Ondrášek

University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, Institute of Social and Special-paedagogical Sciences, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

Introduction: The working poor is a relatively new term which has been discussed recently. These people work, but their income is below the poverty line. Many times, it is close to the minimum wage. Working for a low income brings people much stress, which leads to physical and psychological problems.

Materials and methods: This research was carried out using quantitative research strategies. The Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory standardized questionnaire was used for data collection. Their statistical analysis was carried out using the IBM SPSS Statistics 24 programme. The sample group included 358 working poor inhabitants of the South Bohemian Region.

Results: The research showed that the respondents' average score was between 150 and 300 points. There were 138, which means that, in the next two years, there is a 50% chance that they will have various health problems. The score of 90 respondents was higher than 300 points, which means that they have an 80% chance of having health problems in two years time. The fourth most frequent cause of stress was the possibility of "employment change".

Conclusion: It is very important to study stress and its effect on people. Many studies show how stress can negatively affect us and our health and how great a burden in life it can be. Our research showed that, last year, one-third of the respondents believed that one of the most stressful situations was the change or loss of employment.

Keywords: Physical problems; Psychological problems; Stress; Poor; Working poor

Received: October 10, 2018; Accepted: October 25, 2018; Published: September 1, 2018  Show citation