Children’s Time Use Patterns and Subjective Well-being in Asian Countries

This international study aims to explore time use patterns in which children experience higher subjective well-being within varying national contexts in Asia. This study identifies different types of children’s time use patterns in six emerging Asian economies and examines the relationship between these patterns and their subjective well-being. Data from the third wave of the International Survey of Child Well-Being was used. The data includes information on children’s daily participation in 14 out-of-school activities. Children’s time use patterns for children living in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Nepal were identified using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA). We found that the number of latent classes in the best-fitting models ranges from four to six for these countries. The sets of latent classes of time use patterns were unique to each nation, but there was a common group of children in every country who were overall less engaged in out-of-school activities than their peers. Time use patterns centering on sedentary screen-based leisure activities were identified in three countries where most children own personal mobile devices. Furthermore, the multivariate regression results show that, in countries with high mobile device penetration rates, children with high involvement in overall activities show higher subjective well-being than those with inactive or sedentary lifestyles. In countries with lower mobile device penetration rates, children who regularly engaged in physical or social activities or a wide range of activities reported higher SWB than inactive peers. We discussed the implications of these findings for interventions and research on children’s out-of-school activities.