Material Wellbeing Social Relationships and Chil

Authors: Maggie Lau Jonathan Bradshaw

Publish Date: 2016/11/04

Volume: 11, Issue: 1, Pages: 185-205

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Abstract

There has been growing research interest into child poverty and child wellbeing in Asia However the development of qualitative and quantitative data in the field predominately adopts ‘expertled’ or adultderived measures of child poverty This article aims to explore variations in children’s overall life satisfaction by their sociodemographic 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 Multidisciplinary and Longitudinal Study’ This article reports for the first time evidence based on a childderived material deprivation index thereby addressing the limitations in traditional adultderived child poverty measures The study found that child deprivation explained more of the variation in children’s overall life satisfaction than traditional adultreported 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 satisfactionThis 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 4003SPPR11 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 SDWHHK’ project team for their useful and constructive comments on focus group topic guide and/or survey questionnaire of this project

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