A Study on the Financial Problems and Satisfaction of rural Housewives - Focused on middle-class households -

농가주부의 경제문제 경험과 재정만족도 - 생활수준이 중류층인 가정을 중심으로 -

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors affecting financial satisfaction of rural housewives. Data for this study were collected from 202 households living in 8 provinces. The results were as follows; 1) The most frequent financial problems experienced from expenditures on clothes(82.1%), lack of expense for social intercourse (61.47), and difficulty in purchasing durable goods(60.1%) in the order. 2) 44.6% of the respondents said they were satisfied with their net worth, and 21.6% of them confessed they had difficulties in debt redemption while 52.5% of them said they felt pressure about monthly payments of installments, which reveals that farm households find it hard to pay back short-term debt. 3) The path analysis was adopted to see the causal relations among the variables influenced the financial satisfaction. The variables of experiences of economic problems, educational background(graduated from middle school), saving, income, and age appeared to be important in the order of effectiveness. Among them, the variables of saying and experiences of economic problems showed a direct effect, and those of age and saving displayed an indirect effect with the experiences of economic problems as the parameter. From this findings, it is suggested that rural extension workers and educators should emphasize the importance of the financial plan in their educational programs.