Children’s Profiles of Subjective Well-being Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Correlates: A Multi-national Study

Abstract

By taking the “profiles of change” approach, we aim to explore multi-nationally the change of children’s overall subjective well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the role of social distancing experience, pandemic-related anxiety, and psychological needs fulfillment in this. We use International Children’s Worlds COVID-19 Supplement Survey data collected in 2021 from approximately 20,000 children primarily aged 9–13 years from 16 countries across four continents. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis are used. We found that in all countries, most commonly children’s overall subjective well-being decreased. The decrease was most notable in Turkey, but also in Germany, and Bangladesh. Among different factors, higher pandemic-related school anxiety helped most consistently, almost in all countries, to explain children’s belonging to “decliners” profile. This study offered us an opportunity to extend the evidence base of social-distancing measures impacts on children’s well-being, especially on overall subjective well-being to different national contexts.