Children’s Subjective Well-being in Bangladesh: Influence of Socio-demographic and Economic Factors

Abstract:Overall, research on children’s subjective well-being has received considerable attention from researchers and policymakers in past decades. However, we know very little about children’s subjective well-being in Bangladesh, which has around 64 million children. This article attempts to fill part of this gap. It aims to identify the key socio-demographic and economic factors that are associated with children’s subjective well-being, using data from the Children’s Worlds 3rd Wave survey, which was conducted for the first time in Bangladesh in 2018. Over 3,000 children took part in the survey from three geographical regions in the country. Eight key socio-demographic factors were examined, and four – gender, family structure, rural-urban locality and geographic region – were found to be significantly linked with different levels of children’s subjective well-being in Bangladesh. Three economic factors – material deprivation, family finance worries, and affordability to buy enough food – were significantly associated with subjective well-being assessments in Bangladesh. Out of these seven significant factors, rural-urban locality had the highest effect on subjective well-being among children followed jointly by material deprivation, affordability to buy enough food, and geographical regions. These findings are discussed in the context of previous empirical studies and theories on subjective well-being with special emphasis on their theoretical, methodological and policy significance, not only for Bangladesh but also for cross-cultural research context.