Can Differences of Children’s Subjective Well-Being across Countries Be Entirely Explained by Individual and Family Characteristics?

Shinhye Lee, Seoul National University
Bong Joo Lee, Professor
Sunsuk Kim, Professor

This study is to examine how much individual level and country level factors explain children’s subjective well-being. The data was obtained from 12 -year-old children of the 3rd wave from the International Survey of Children’s Well-Being (ISCWeB). The sample was composed N=43,297 12-year-olds from 27 countries. We use multilevel method in the study. Multilevel method is used to predict children’s subjective well-being at two level. Level 1, individual-level factors, including gender, home environment, family relationships, peer relationships, teacher relationships, school environment, and neighborhood quality. Level 2, country-level GDP per capita, GINI Coefficient, Households and NPISHs final consumption expenditure (% of GDP), Current health expenditure (% of GDP), Public Spending on Education (% of GDP). As the ISCWeB wave 3 survey was conducted between 2017 and 2019, each indicator extracted from 2018 data. As is already known to some extent in previous studies, in our Model 1 analysis, it was found that country-level factors did not predict the children’s subjective well-being very much. However, it was confirmed that there was a deviation between each country. A more detailed analysis will be conducted and the results will be presented.

Keywords: Multi-level modeling , Children, Adolescents, and Youth, Neighbourhood/contextual effect analysis, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

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