Child psychological well-being and its associations with material deprivation and type of home

Psychological well-being (PWB) has been defined as a way of living well and realizing ones human potentials more than an outcome or a psychological state (Deci & Ryan, 2008). There have been a number of attempts to measure PWB of adults and at a country level such as the multidimensional model of psychological well-being, which proposed six psychological dimensions (Ryff & Keyes, 1995). This paper attempts to analyse some PWB data from children across 15 countries, using the Children's Worlds Survey of 12-year-olds. The instrument used to measure PWB (The Children's Society, 2013) contains 6 items, one for each of Ryff's dimensions. First, the overall view is presented using descriptive information from the pooled sample and then from each specific country. Then, the overlaps between PWB and material deprivation and the overlaps between PWB and type of home are analysed for each country. Being deprived and not living with the family seems to be associated with PWB across all countries. In the countries studied, more than 25% of the deprived children also reported low PWB, reaching the huge percentage of 69% in S Korea. The same happens with the type of home: in all countries more than 21% of the children who are not living with their families also reported low PWB, reaching 100% in S Korea. Some initial implications and recommendations based on this research are presented, but we need further investigation and more data from children to cover the lack of information about PWB from their point of view.