Children’s socioeconomic circumstances, family relationships and subjective well-being: Evidence from Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study

Using data from Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), this thesis seeks to understand how different constellations of socioeconomic circumstances, family contexts and family relationships combine to explain differences in children’s quality of life, as measured through self-reported measures of subjective well-being (SWB). The statistical methods used include confirmatory factor analysis, logistic and linear regression, fixed and random effects models, latent class analysis and structural equation modelling. Measurement is a central theme. Chapter 2 adds to the nascent literature on measurement of children’s SWB to deepen understanding of what SWB is measuring in children, and why different measures have different correlates. There is support for a four-domain model of SWB –family, friends, school and appearance – which had longitudinal invariance. However, testing of this model with children of different ages, sexes and ethnicities cautions against unreflective use of composite SWB scores to compare sub-groups. The appearance domain, in particular, appears to have different salience for different sub-groups of children. Chapter 3 considers measurement of socioeconomic circumstances and finds that measures that take account of children’s perspectives on their material circumstances have the strongest associations with SWB. Chapter 4, which examines family composition, finds that nuanced measures that acknowledge variation in the formality of step-parent structures and the additional layer of support provided to some families by extended family offer insights into the processes that link family structures to SWB. Chapter 5 considers children and adult perspectives on family relationship quality. Once measures of support, closeness and conflict are combined in typologies of parent-child and sibling relationships, a clear theme emerges of socioeconomic disadvantage and financial stress being associated with lower relationship quality and, in turn, with children’s SWB. Neglectful parent-child relationships characterised by high levels of conflict and low warmth, and sibling relationships characterised by high conflict had the strongest associations with SWB.