IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/chinre/v11y2018i1d10.1007_s12187-016-9421-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exploring Low Subjective Well-Being Among Children Aged 11 in the UK: an Analysis Using Data Reported by Parents and by Children

Author

Listed:
  • Gwyther Rees

    (University of York)

  • Jonathan Bradshaw

    (University of York)

Abstract

If we cannot explain the factors that affect the subjective well-being of children we cannot know what to do to improve it. Comparative studies have found that children in some countries have higher mean levels of subjective well-being than children in other countries. But studies of variations in subjective well-being of children within countries, based on school based surveys of children, have failed to explain much of the variation in subjective well-being observed. This may be because such surveys can only collect limited data on their household and school from the child. Wave 5 of the UK Millennium Cohort Survey (11-year-olds) presents a new opportunity to understand the factors affecting children’s subjective well-being making use of information gathered from parents as well as children. This article aims to identify factors which can predict the likelihood of children having low subjective well-being. The key findings from the analysis are that (a) a wide range of parent-reported variables have some power in predicting low child subjective well-being; (b) in comparison a small selection of child-reported variables have more explanatory power. Factors such as material deprivation, family financial strain, parental well-being and children’s experience of being bullied emerge as important in the analysis. The implications for future research on child subjective well-being are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Gwyther Rees & Jonathan Bradshaw, 2018. "Exploring Low Subjective Well-Being Among Children Aged 11 in the UK: an Analysis Using Data Reported by Parents and by Children," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 11(1), pages 27-56, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:chinre:v:11:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s12187-016-9421-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s12187-016-9421-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-016-9421-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s12187-016-9421-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zlata Bruckauf & Yekaterina Chzhen & UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2016. "Poverty and Children’s Cognitive Trajectories: Evidence from the United Kingdom Millennium Cohort Study," Papers inwopa839, Innocenti Working Papers.
    2. Bruno Martorano & Luisa Natali & Chris De Neubourg & Jonathan Bradshaw, 2013. "Children’s Subjective Well-being in Rich Countries," Papers inwopa686, Innocenti Working Papers.
    3. Andrew Dickerson & Gurleen K. Popli, 2016. "Persistent poverty and children's cognitive development: evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 179(2), pages 535-558, February.
    4. Michael Eid & Ed Diener, 2004. "Global Judgments of Subjective Well-Being: Situational Variability and Long-Term Stability," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 65(3), pages 245-277, February.
    5. Helliwell, John & Layard, Richard & Sachs, Jeffrey, 2012. "World happiness report," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 47487, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Ottar Hellevik, 2009. "Linear versus logistic regression when the dependent variable is a dichotomy," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 59-74, January.
    7. Ed Diener & Ronald Inglehart & Louis Tay, 2013. "Theory and Validity of Life Satisfaction Scales," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 112(3), pages 497-527, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Prakash, Kushneel & Smyth, Russell, 2019. "‘The quintessential Chinese dream’? Homeownership and the subjective wellbeing of China's next generation," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    2. Janka Goldan & Lena Nusser & Michael Gebel, 2022. "School-related Subjective Well-being of Children with and without Special Educational Needs in Inclusive Classrooms," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(4), pages 1313-1337, August.
    3. Chen, Ke-Mei, 2020. "Subjective poverty, deprivation, and the subjective well-being of children and young people: A multilevel growth curve analysis in Taiwan," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    4. Renuka Mahadevan & Sha Fan, 2021. "Differential Effects of Parents’ Education on Adolescent Well-being Outcomes," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(6), pages 2495-2516, December.
    5. Wilmes, Johanna & Andresen, Sabine, 2023. "The concept of needs in child well-being research: Lessons from a mixed methods study in Germany," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    6. Marija Džida & Toni Babarović & Andreja Brajša-Žganec, 2023. "The Factor Structure of Different Subjective Well-Being Measures and its Correlates in the Croatian Sample of Children and Adolescents," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 16(5), pages 1871-1888, October.
    7. Aurea Grané & Irene Albarrán & Ana Arribas-Gil, 2020. "Constructing a Children’s Subjective Well-Being Index: an Application to Socially Vulnerable Spanish Children," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 13(4), pages 1235-1254, August.
    8. Daphna Gross-Manos & Jonathan Bradshaw, 2022. "The Association Between the Material Well-Being and the Subjective Well-Being of Children in 35 Countries," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gwyther Rees, 2018. "The Association of Childhood Factors with Children’s Subjective Well-Being and Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties at 11 years old," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 11(4), pages 1107-1129, August.
    2. Young Ho Yun & Ye Eun Rhee & Eunkyo Kang & Jin-ah Sim, 2019. "The Satisfaction with Life Scale and the Subjective Well-Being Inventory in the General Korean Population: Psychometric Properties and Normative Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-10, April.
    3. Lee, Bong Joo & Yoo, Min Sang, 2017. "What accounts for the variations in children's subjective well-being across nations?: A decomposition method study," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 15-21.
    4. Kai Ludwigs & Richard Lucas & Martijn Burger & Ruut Veenhoven & Lidia Arends, 2018. "How Does More Attention to Subjective Well-Being Affect Subjective Well-Being?," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 13(4), pages 1055-1080, December.
    5. Kyoungmi Park & Shun Wang, 2019. "Youth Activities and Children’s Subjective Well-Being in Korea," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(7), pages 2351-2365, October.
    6. Luijten, Chantie C. & van de Bongardt, Daphne & Jongerling, Joran & Nieboer, Anna P., 2021. "Longitudinal associations among adolescents’ internalizing problems, well-being, and the quality of their relationships with their mothers, fathers, and close friends," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 289(C).
    7. Angelina Wilson Fadiji & Leana Meiring & Marie P. Wissing, 2021. "Understanding Well-Being in the Ghanaian Context: Linkages between Lay Conceptions of Well-Being and Measures of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 649-677, April.
    8. Bruno Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2017. "Public Choice and Happiness," CREMA Working Paper Series 2017-03, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    9. Yanhui Xiang & Rong Yuan, 2021. "Why Do People with High Dispositional Gratitude Tend to Experience High Life Satisfaction? A Broaden-and-Build Theory Perspective," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(6), pages 2485-2498, August.
    10. Andrew E. Clark, 2018. "Four Decades of the Economics of Happiness: Where Next?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(2), pages 245-269, June.
    11. Sarah Flèche & Richard Layard, 2017. "Do More of Those in Misery Suffer from Poverty, Unemployment or Mental Illness?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(1), pages 27-41, February.
    12. Po-Wen Ku & Kenneth Fox & Chun-Yi Chang & Wen-Jung Sun & Li-Jung Chen, 2014. "Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Associations of Categories of Physical Activities with Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being in Taiwanese Older Adults," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 117(3), pages 705-718, July.
    13. Bhuiyan, Muhammad Faress & Ivlevs, Artjoms, 2019. "Micro-entrepreneurship and subjective well-being: Evidence from rural Bangladesh," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 625-645.
    14. Ravallion, Martin, 2019. "Global inequality when unequal countries create unequal people," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 85-97.
    15. Camilla Lenzi & Giovanni Perucca, 2021. "Not too close, not too far: Urbanisation and life satisfaction along the urban hierarchy," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(13), pages 2742-2757, October.
    16. Jason Wei Jian Ng & Santha Vaithilingam & Grace H. Y. Lee & Gary J. Rangel, 2022. "Life Satisfaction and Incumbent Voting: Examining the Mediating Effect of Trust in Government," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(6), pages 2947-2967, August.
    17. Lössbroek, Jelle & Radl, Jonas, 2019. "Teaching older workers new tricks: workplace practices and gender training differences in nine European countries," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 39(10), pages 2170-2193.
    18. Bruno S. Frey & Anthony Gullo, 2021. "Does Sports Make People Happier, or Do Happy People More Sports?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(4), pages 432-458, May.
    19. Georgellis, Yannis & Clark, Andrew E. & Apergis, Emmanuel & Robinson, Catherine, 2022. "Occupational status and life satisfaction in the UK: The miserable middle?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 509-527.
    20. Inessa Love & Boris Nikolaev & Chandra Dhakal, 2024. "The well-being of women entrepreneurs: the role of gender inequality and gender roles," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 325-352, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:chinre:v:11:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s12187-016-9421-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.