PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF POVERTY IN SELECTED LIFE DIMENSIONS

Poverty is a phenomenon that receives a lot of attention from a wide range of professionals as well as the lay public. This is a serious problem that significantly changes the lives and functions of individuals, families, as well as communities. The aim of this study was to find out how society perceives the consequences of poverty in individual dimensions of human life selected by us and also to find differences in perception of the consequences of poverty in terms of the selected demographic data (gender, place where the respondent lives, place of residence – city or countryside, faith, employment status, shared household, benefits in material deprivation, and an opinion on who should primarily address the problem of poverty). A quantitative research strategy was implemented using a self-designed questionnaire. The questionnaire contained 37 items and focused on the perception of poverty and its consequences in our selected areas. The questionnaire contained 6 basic dimensions, resp. areas. These were the health area, the hygiene area, the social area, the psychological area, the structural area and the housing area. We used a deliberate and quota selection (region, gender). The total sample (n) consisted of 384 respondents. The average age of the respondents was 36.30 ± 12.91 years old (min. 18, max. 75). The results did not show a statistically significant difference in the perception of areas most affected by poverty in terms of gender; in terms of receiving benefits in material need, there was a statistically significant difference in health, mental health, housing and social affairs. In terms of residence (countryside, city), a statistical difference was recorded only in the area of ​​health. There were also significant statistical differences in the area of geography (the region in which the respondent lives), in the area of health and hygiene, and the structural area. The practice of faith has proven to be an important determinant of the perception of poverty, especially in the social and psychological spheres. We also noticed differences in the perception of poverty in some areas in terms of shared household and employment status.