The ownership of financial assets protects American households from experiencing the struggles of income poverty. The asset-based theory of American social welfare, which was conceptualized by Professor Michael Sherraden in 1991 and amended in 2001 by other scholars, posited that social welfare programs diminish the prevalence of poverty by enabling households to save funds to purchase assets. This theory has been scantly testedespecially among American householdsdespite a great amount of funds being invested into programs designed to help low-income American households to build assets. The only previous study that examined the intermediary role of future-orientations on the effect of asset-ownership on a financial outcome operationalized assets as comprised primarily of farm animals (i.e., oxen, chicken, pigs, etc.), in a manner that deviates substantively from the original conceptualization of the asset-based theory of American social welfare.
This dissertation research endeavored to remedy this limitation within the asset-ownership literature by utilizing data from a representative survey sample of American householdsnamely the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the accompanying Transition-to-Adulthood Supplementto empirically test the theory using structural equation modeling analyses. Structural equation modeling analyses of the data suggested that young adults future-orientations positively partially mediated the effect of parental asset-ownership on young adults financial responsibility. Specifically, parental asset-ownership had an important direct effect (β = -0.174, z = -6.91, p = 0.000) on young adults financial responsibility, coupled with an important mediation effect of young adults future-orientations (β = 0.012, z = 4.17, p = 0.000) on the relationship between parental asset-ownership and young adults financial responsibility. The mediation effects implied that the design of asset-development programs should integrate components into the structure of the programs that empower the low-income participants to think and talk about their future-orientations and plans.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-03012016-131829 |
| Date | 23 March 2016 |
| Creators | Bickham III, Louie Fletcher |
| Contributors | Chanda, Areendam, Stamps-Mitchell, Katherine, Lim, Younghee, Livermore, Michelle |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-03012016-131829/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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