What Children Think Is a Good Place: A Cross-Country Study on the Effects of Children’s Perceptions of Neighborhood on Children’s Subjective Well-Being

Over the past two decades, interest in measuring and applying children’s subjective well-being to policy decisions has grown. Several cross-national studies have documented the positive association between children’s perceptions of neighborhood quality and their overall subjective well-being. It remains unclear how neighborhood quality influences the other areas of children’s lives when multidimensional measures of subjective well-being are utilized. Additionally, the pathway from children’s perceived neighborhood quality to their overall subjective well-being needs to be better understood. This study explores the association between children’s perceived neighborhood quality and multidimensional subjective well-being, overall subjective well-being and the consistency of these relationships across 16 countries. A secondary data analysis of the second wave of data collected from the International Survey of Children’s Well-Being (ISCWeB) was performed. Findings indicated that children’s perception of neighborhood quality was positively associated with children’s multidimensional subjective well-being, but this relationship was not consistent across countries. This study also found a partial mediation effect of the association between children’s perceived neighborhood quality and overall subjective well-being through their satisfaction with neighborhood. The findings highlight the role of neighborhood quality in shaping children’s multidimensional subjective well-being and the need for policies to consider children’s perceptions to be effective.