Family, School, and Neighbourhood Microsystems Influence on children’s Life Satisfaction in Chile

Abstract

At an international level, different researches have pointed out the importance of taking into account opinions of children and adolescents in order to study their subjective wellbeing. Reviewing scientific literature, it is recognized that wellbeing is, specially, affected by microsystems such as family, school or neighbourhood. However, these microsystems have not been studied enough regarding their influence on subjective wellbeing on childhood. This research aims to identify the joint influence of family, school and neighbourhood microsystems on life satisfaction of Chilean children. The sample were 1392 children between 10 and 13 years, from state subsidized municipal schools, state subsidized private schools and non-subsidized private schools. Results show that after analysing different structural equation models, a better adjustment is obtained by a five dimension configured model which allows to explain life satisfaction of students. It is concluded that the higher influence factor on life satisfaction is school relationships, followed by satisfaction with the family, satisfaction with the neighbourhood and family relationships. A relevant finding was that satisfaction with school does not exerts any significant influence on life satisfaction.