Effects of income and material deprivation on children’s life satisfaction: evidence from longitudinal data for England (2009-2018)

Publication type

Journal Article

Author

Publication date

October 5, 2021

Summary:

A plethora of research shows that income is an important factor in adult’s life satisfaction, but research ascertaining its importance for children’s life satisfaction is scant. Using a largescale nationally representative longitudinal survey with children aged 10–15, we estimate comprehensive life satisfaction models that account for heterogeneity in exogenous circumstances in children’s lives, focussing on family income and material deprivation. We find empirical support for the hypothesis that children are more satisfied with their lives, the more income their family has and the less material deprivation they experience throughout their teens. There are, however, differences across age groups with children aged 12–15 experiencing greater life satisfaction losses on account of lower family material wellbeing than younger children. Overall, income effects for older children are small but statistically significant when accounting for unobserved individual differences.

Published in

Journal of Happiness Studies

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-021-00457-3

ISSN

13894978

Subjects

Notes

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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