DOES POVERTY AFFECT THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF SCHEDULED CASTE HIGHER SECONDARY STUDENTS

The socio-economic status of an individual or a community is influenced by multiple factors. This study attempts to find out whether the factor ‘poverty’ affects the socio-economic development of scheduled caste higher secondary students.Survey method was adopted for the study. Simple random sampling technique was used for collecting a sample of 715 higher secondary students from 79 schools in Kanyakumari district of Tamil NaduState, India. The applied statistical techniques percentage analysis,‘t’ test, ANOVA, Pearson’s product moment correlation, regression analysis and factor analysis revealed the following results. The level of poverty of majority of the SC higher secondary students was found to be moderate. A significant difference was found between male and female SC higher secondary students in their poverty, and the female SC higher secondary students were better than the male SC higher secondary students in their poverty. A significant difference was found among government, aided and private school SC higher secondary students in their poverty. The private school SC higher secondary students were better in their poverty than the aided school and government school SC higher secondary students. A significant relationship and influence were found between poverty and socio-economic status of SChigher secondary students. The factor analysis of the correlation matrix for poverty on socio-economic status of SC higher secondary students shows the presence of poverty with considerable factor loading