Poverty consciousness is a part of welfare consciousness, but is more focused on both the poverty issue as a social problem and the social remedy to cope with poverty, reflecting the level of public support for welfare system and services specifically for the poor. Welfare consciousness is known as determined by complex processes of human motivation for self interest and social interest. Likewise poverty consciousness is deemed to be effected by such self- and social interests, which affect people"s attitudes towards the poor and social institutions to cope with poverty. For undergraduates in the career path of social work, poverty consciousness is important not only for understanding the poor who are main users of social services but also as the future professional agent between the poor and the welfare policy and service system.
Thus, this study explored poverty consciousness of college students(n=142) taking a core course "social work practice" and the relationship between the consciousness and self and social interests, comparing those who decided their career path in social work(n=102, "c-group" in the below) with those who wanted to take a different career path(n=40, "non c-group" in the below).
Major findings are: 1) There were no significant statistical differences between c-group and non c-group in terms of age, grade, sex, self interest variables(satisfaction with her/his economic condition, social class), the levels of poverty consciousness(consisted of two factors, one for the poor and the other for social remedy for poverty), social interest variables(consciousness of social inequality, economic anti-individualism, welfare responsibility for the socially vulnerable population between the public and the private sector). 2) Regarding the welfare responsibility for different clientele, significantly more c-group students preferred for public responsibility for the poor and less private responsibility compared to the non c-group; for the elderly, significantly more non c-group students preferred private care and significantly more c-group students preferred for public care. 3) In the correlation analyses, in both groups the level of consciousness about the poor had significant relationship with the level of consciousness for social remedy for poverty; in both groups there was significant positive correlation between satisfaction with economic condition and the social class, which significant relationship was only shown in non c-group. That is, the former showed significant correlation with social remedy(factor 2) and the latter with the consciousness for the poor(factor 1). None of the major variables showed significant relationship with social interest variables. Based on these findings, implications for social work education were suggested.