The Subjective and Psychological Well-Being of Children in South Africa: a Population-Based Study

Abstract

Objective and subjective indicators reflect distinct but complementary information on children’s lives. While South Africa has well-developed reporting systems and reasonable data on children’s objective living conditions, there is a substantial lack of data as it relates to subjective indicators – that is what children think and feel, and how they evaluate their overall life and different aspects of their lives. This study is conceptualised to contribute to the data on children’s subjective and psychological well-being. We used a nationally representative population-based sample to provide an analysis of children’s subjective well-being (including context-free cognitive life-satisfaction, domain-based cognitive life-satisfaction, and positive and negative affect) and psychological well-being (eudaimonic perspective) across the nine provincial regions, age (10- to 12-years-old), gender (boys and girls), geographical context (urban and rural), and socio-economic status (low, lower-middle, and middle). We used data from the South African Children’s Worlds Study, with a nationally representative sample of 7 428 children (10- and 12-years-old), selected from primary schools in all nine provincial regions in South Africa. We found an appropriate fit structure for all the measuring instruments, and confirmed measurement invariance across provincial region, age, gender, geographical context, and socio-economic status. The scores on these separate components on children’s subjective and psychological well-being represent normative scores, and can be generalised to 10- and 12-year-old children across the country.