Peer-reviewed article
Money Matters: a Nuanced Approach to Understanding the Relationship between Household Income and Child Subjective Well-Being
Gill Main ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examines how household income relates to children's subjective well-being using data from over 1,000 parent-child pairs aged 10-16 in England. The research found that income affects child well-being in complex ways, both directly and indirectly through children's experiences of material deprivation, their perceptions of fairness in how family resources are shared, and their own assessments of their material circumstances. The study highlights that children actively shape their views on their needs and economic status, which means looking only at household income alone cannot fully explain child poverty's impact on well-being.
Key points
- Income has both significant direct and indirect associations with child subjective well-being
- The relationship between household income and child well-being is mediated by material deprivation, perceptions of fairness in intra-household resource allocation, and subjective material well-being
- Children play active roles in assessing their material needs and comparative socio-economic status
- Household-level poverty measures do not adequately capture children's agency in forming views about their material circumstances
- Income, deprivation, fairness perceptions, and subjective material well-being are all significantly interrelated predictors of well-being
Limitations
This study is observational and cross-sectional, so it cannot establish causal relationships between income and well-being. The research focuses on England only, and it relies on parent-child pairs who agreed to participate, which may not represent all families or children's perspectives equally.
Abstract
This paper examines the links between household income and child subjective well-being. Previous studies produce contradictory findings: qualitative investigations indicate a strong relationship which is elusive in quantitative studies. I hypothesise that the reason for this discrepancy is that household-level measures of child poverty do not adequately capture children’s active roles in forming views on their material needs, assessing their comparative socio-economic status, and contributing to processes and outcomes of intra-household resource sharing. Thus a relationship between household income and subjective well-being is hypothesised to exist, but to be mediated by factors including (among others) material deprivation, perceptions of fairness in the processes and outcomes of intra-household allocation, and subjective material well-being. Drawing on survey data from a sample of 1010 parent-child (aged 10–16) pairs in England, structural equation modelling is used to examine these potential mediating effects. Findings indicate that income has a complex role to play in child subjective well-being, with significant direct and indirect associations. Income, deprivation, perceptions of the fairness of intra-household allocation processes and outcomes, and subjective material well-being are all significantly interrelated and are all predictors of subjective well-being. The complex nature of these relationships illustrates the multi-dimensional nature of child poverty and its impacts. Household income is an important factor; but alone it cannot capture children’s active roles in assessing their needs and material living conditions. This confirms the importance of considering children’s agency in understandings of child poverty and material well-being, and including their reports in studies of child poverty and intra-household allocation.