Child poverty and well-being

Recent research from The Children's Society has been exploring young people's own views of well-being with a particularly focus the affect of income poverty and material deprivation on subjective well-being.

Our report from March 2011, How happy are our children: measuring children's well-being and exploring economic factors found a clear link between low household income and a child’s low well-being. We found significantly lower wellbeing for children in lower income household groups.

Emotional effects of child poverty and material deprivation

Our latest report Missing out: a child centred analysis of material deprivation and subjective well-being found that many children lack some of the key items and experiences they believe are essential for a ‘normal life’. Moreover, these materially deprived children are considerably more likely to have low levels of well-being. We recommended that measures of material deprivation, as perceived by children, should be incorporated into government measurements of child poverty alongside the Child Poverty Act 2010 targets.