Personal and social factors that influence subjective well-being: socioeconomic differences

Abstract

The main objective is to study the relation and impact of Socioeconomic Status (SES) on the subjective well-being in children and adolescents and the role of social and personal factors in this relation. Data was collected in 16 schools; 8 in the North and 8 in the Lisbon Region of Portugal. The questionnaires were filled out by 1,181 youths, 51.5% of which were female. Ages ranged between 8 and 17, the girl's average age being 9.8 years (SD = 1.32) and the boy's average age being 10.0 (SD = 1.53); 2.6% of young people had special educational needs, and 3% did not use the Portuguese language at home; 12.2% had repeated a grade; 27.1% had a high SES; 64.2% had medium/low SES and 8.7% were unemployed. Three adequate regression models were built. Model 1 established the association between SES and subjective well-being. This association turned out to be not significant with the effect of personal and social factors, which were strongly associated with subjective wellbeing. It was revealed that the impact of SES on subjective well-being is mitigated by the presence of social and personal factors. The promotion of personal and social skills appears to be an effective way to avoid the negative effects of low SES in child and adolescent development.