Abstract
This chapter looks at how children feel about their lives as a whole. The measurement of overall well-being is a cornerstone of the Children’s Worlds project. As well as providing a valuable overview of how children feel about their lives across countries, it also provides a basis for analysing the relative importance of various factors for children’s overall well-being. This chapter provides a descriptive account of the measures of overall well-being included in the survey. It describes variations between countries based on mean well-being and also inequalities in well-being; and considers some of the possible factors that explain these variations. This general approach of exploring variations, including a focus on inequalities, is one which will also be employed in subsequent chapters which look at specific aspects of children’s lives. The chapter shows that looking at means and inequalities creates a slightly different picture of comparisons between countries, with some countries ranking higher for mean well-being and other countries ranking higher for equality in well-being. This is an important issue which will also be pursued later in the book. This chapter will also look at variations within countries according to demographic characteristics – age and gender. Chapter 14 will look at a selection of other factors in children’s lives that might explain why, within countries, some children have substantially higher or lower overall well-being than others.
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Notes
- 1.
This set of questions is derived from the Student Life Satisfaction Scale (Huebner 1991). The first three items are taken directly from that scale and the fourth is an additional item being tested for the first time. A fifth question was also asked but this is not used here on the basis of statistical testing done by Casas (2016).
- 2.
This set of questions is based on ideas from Russell’s work on ‘core affect’ (Feldman Barrett & Russell 1980). The items were selected with the age group and cross-national nature of the survey in mind. It was decided in this survey only to focus on positive affect so there are no items relating to negative affect.
- 3.
This set of items covers the six components of psychological well-being proposed by Ryff (1989). The final two items are alternative options for the component relating to ‘purpose in life’. Some of the items are based on ones originally suggested by Keyes (2006) and Ryan & Deci (www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/questionnaires).
- 4.
The Pearson correlation between the average rank of the mean and the average rank of inequality was 0.86.
- 5.
The Pearson correlation between child life satisfaction and log GNI per capita was 0.241, p = 0.33. The corresponding coefficients for positive affect and eudaimonic well-being with log GNI per capita were −0.105, p = 0.67 and −0.022, p = 0.93.
- 6.
Pearson correlation = 0.438, p = 0.07.
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Rees, G. (2017). Overall Well-Being. In: Children’s Views on Their Lives and Well-being. Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65196-5_6
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