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Material Well-being, Social Relationships and Children’s Overall Life Satisfaction in Hong Kong

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Abstract

There has been growing research interest into child poverty and child well-being in Asia. However the development of qualitative and quantitative data in the field predominately adopts ‘expert-led’ or adult-derived measures of child poverty. This article aims to explore variations in children’s overall life satisfaction by their socio-demographic characteristics and social relationships in Hong Kong. Data used in this article is drawn from the first wave of the Strategic Public Policy Research (SPPR) project– ‘Trends and Implications of Poverty and Social Disadvantages in Hong Kong: A Multi-disciplinary and Longitudinal Study’. This article reports, for the first time evidence based on a child-derived material deprivation index - thereby addressing the limitations in traditional adult-derived child poverty measures. The study found that child deprivation explained more of the variation in children’s overall life satisfaction than traditional adult-reported income poverty. Further analyses showed that children’s perceived positive relationships with family and teachers, perceived strong social support from family, and experience of being bullied were associated with their life satisfaction.

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Notes

  1. Further discussion is provided in the Section 2 below.

  2. Adult-reported data on the PSDE and PDHI streams aims to collect information on people’s living conditions and circumstances. The re-interviewing of respondents were asked, from a list of 41 adult and child items, covering various domains (e.g. food, clothing, health, housing and social and family activities), to indicate whether they thought these items and activities were ‘necessary’ which all adults /children should have to do without. Items and activities attracting 50 % or more public support were considered consensually agreed and thus classified as socially perceived ‘necessities’. Then, all respondents were asked to indicate whether they had an item or did an activity and, if they did not, to distinguish if this was due to a lack of money (affordability) or choice (personal preference). The survey included questions about a number of other topics such as income, subjective poverty, housing and living environment, public and private services, social networks and support, health behaviours (e.g. dietary behaviour, physical activity and exercise), and health conditions (e.g. physical and mental health, anxiety and depression) and healthcare utilization, to obtain contextual information about people’s wider circumstances.

  3. The focus group methodology aims to address two key questions from children’s own perspectives: (1) what are the conditions for a good life?; and (2) which life dimensions (e.g. material situation and social relationships) do children think are important in their lives? To help stimulate focus group discussion, a list of necessities for children adapted from past studies was provided. Children were encouraged to add to, or delete from this list or to amend them as they see fit. A list of 21 child items and activities was informed by this qualitative work with children.

  4. Abbreviation are shown in bracket at the end of each item.

  5. Children in jobless households are more likely to be experienced income poverty (Lietz et al. 2015; UNICEF 2007).

  6. This study uses an equivalence scale which divides household income by the square root of household size (OECD 2013).

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Acknowledgments

This study was fully supported by a grant from the Central Policy Unit of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. 4003-SPPR-11). The authors would also like to thank Dr Anne Crowley, Professor David Gordon, Dr Gill Main, Ms Christina Pantazis, Dr Eileen Sutton and the ‘Social Disadvantages, Well -being and Health in Hong Kong (SDWH-HK)’ project team for their useful and constructive comments on focus group topic guide and/or survey questionnaire of this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

    Maggie Lau

  2. Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, UK

    Jonathan Bradshaw

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  1. Maggie Lau
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Correspondence to Maggie Lau.

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Lau, M., Bradshaw, J. Material Well-being, Social Relationships and Children’s Overall Life Satisfaction in Hong Kong. Child Ind Res 11, 185–205 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-016-9426-7

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