Social Science and Human Research Bulletin

Low-income families across the global South, particularly in Africa, confront daily economic stressors that generate anxiety, emotional fatigue, and psychological vulnerability. Rising living costs, unstable labour markets, food insecurity, and weak social protection systems intensify household distress. Within these contexts, religion frequently becomes a key survival strategy, offering individuals and families emotional relief, moral grounding, and a sense of meaning amid hardship. This paper examines how poverty shapes emotional stress and how religious coping emerges as a psychosocial mechanism that helps low-income families navigate material deprivation. Drawing on sociological and psychological insights, the study explores the multidimensional nature of emotional stress, manifesting in worry, hopelessness, shame, and chronic strain, and analyses how prayer, rituals, communal worship, pastoral counselling, and belief in divine intervention provide stability and resilience. While religious coping can strengthen hope, social bonding, and emotional regulation, it can also reinforce fatalism or discourage structural critique of economic injustice. The paper argues that religious coping is neither inherently protective nor problematic; rather, its effects depend on context, intensity, and the quality of religious engagement. It concludes by recommending integrated socio-religious interventions addressing both spiritual needs and material deprivation.

poverty, emotional stress, religious coping, survival strategies, low-income families

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