The Association of Childhood Factors with Children’s Subjective Well-Being and Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties at 11 years old

Abstract

Studies using cross-sectional data have found that factors such as family socio-economic status, family structure and parental well-being have relatively weak associations with children's subjective well-being. However there is a lack of longitudinal research exploring whether early childhood circumstances, and the cumulative effect of these kinds of factors over time, exert a stronger influence. This article uses data from a longitudinal representative sample of over 13,000 children in the UK to examine the associations between family and socio-economic factors from the age of nine months to 11 years old and children's subjective well-being at the age of 11. The analysis finds that family and socio-economic factors in early and middle childhood only explain small amounts of the variation in children's subjective well-being. A parallel analysis finds that the same factors can explain much more of the variation in children's emotional and behaviour difficulties. These findings strengthen existing cross-sectional evidence on the lack of substantial socio-economic variation in children's subjective well-being and provide further the support for the distinction between correlates of positive and negative indicators of child well-being.

Variations in Children’s Affective Subjective Well-Being at Seven Years Old: an Analysis of Current and Historical Factors

“…Rees (2017) found a similar pattern in relation to children's cognitive SWB at the age of 11 years old. The fact that variations in SWB at an earlier age, closer to early childhood circumstances, show the same of lack association strengthens the idea that children's SWB is much more determined by current than historical factors.…”

“…The comparatively different pattern of findings when using the same sets of independent variables to predict emotional and behavioural difficulties at the age of seven years old provides further evidence (Patalay and Fitzsimons 2016;Rees 2017) to support the distinction between measures of positive well-being and measures of children's difficulties. This analysis indicates that the early childhood circumstances being considered have more predictive power in terms of emotional and behavioural difficulties than affective subjective well-being.…”

“…I will focus here on research in the UK as this is directly relevant to the data set being analysed for this paper and there is some evidence that the correlates of SWB vary in important ways from one country to another (Rees 2017). Factors such as age, gender, material deprivation (Main and Bradshaw 2012), personality (Goswami 2014), family structure/living situation (Rees et al 2010), quality of family relationships , peer relationships (Goswami 2012) and bullying , school experiences (Patalay and Fitzsimons 2016), characteristics of the local area , and children's daily activities (Abdallah et al 2014) have all been found to be linked with variations in children's SWB.…”

“…Powdthavee and Vernoit (2013) similarly found some evidence of longitudinal links between parental unemployment and children's life satisfaction, although this varied by age and gender. Rees (2017) reported that a range of family and socio-economic factors in early and middle childhood had very little association with children's SWB at the age of 11 years old. There is a need for more research that explores such longitudinal associations throughout childhood and adolescence.…”

“…In adult populations there is both overlap and difference between indicators of mental health problems and people's life satisfaction or happiness (Bergsma et al 2011). Two recent UK studies (Patalay and Fitzsimons 2016;Rees 2017) have compared the predictive power of various factors in children's lives on indicators of their SWB and EBD at the age of 11 years old, and have found substantial differences. This is an area that warrants further exploration as such differences provide insights into the value of different approaches to measuring children's well-being (in a broad sense).…”