Summary and discussion
This chapter has provided a description of aspects of the context of children’s lives based on the information gathered from children in the survey.
The large majority of children in all countries lived with their family, but within this broad description there are wide variations in household composition and living arrangements. In some countries (Nepal, Romania, South Africa and Poland) a third or more of children lived in three-generation households with one or more parents and one or more grandparents. In some countries – particularly Norway, the UK and Estonia – more than one in ten children regularly lived in two different homes, usually with one birth parent in each home. There is potential for further analysis to map the diversity of children’s living circumstances across the 15 countries in the survey.
The survey also shows the range of material circumstances in which children live. In some countries, children typically have access to a much wider range of items and resources than others. The variations in children’s ability to access the internet – ranging from 99% in Norway to 2% in Ethiopia – for example, are likely to be linked to substantial cross-national differences in how children spend their time and interact socially, and these factors might usefully be borne in mind when considering the findings presented in later chapters on friendships and time use.
Given the diversity of the sample of countries included in the survey it is not surprising that this descriptive analysis highlights substantial variations between countries. These variations provide important background information for the findings presented in the chapters that follow. This information also offers opportunities for future analysis of the data set to explore the extent to which children’s subjective well-being varying according to contextual factors within and between countries.