Children's Time-Use Pattern and Subjective Well-Being: The Comparison of 6 Asian Countries

Background and Purpose:

Children’s daily routine reflects their everyday opportunity for well-being and development. As the way children work, study, and play relies on a certain economic and cultural context of a society, previous literature on children’s time-use has been geographically bifurcated based on disparate themes. For example, while studies on children’s screen time have been mainly conducted among industrialized western countries, studies on child labor have been carried on exclusively among the low-income countries in the Southern hemisphere. As a result, there has been a limitation to compare children’s diverse activities as a whole, leaving Asian children understudied. To address the thematic divide and geographical bias of existing research, this study aims to explore children’s time-use patterns in 6 Asian countries (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Nepal) and analyze the association between children’s time-use patterns and their subjective well-being (SWB).

Methods:

This study utilizes the 3^rd wave of the International Survey of Children’s Well-being (ISCWeB), collected by Children’s World, focusing on the 12-year-old children of the abovementioned 6 countries (2016~2019; N=13,618). The analytic strategies are twofold. First, Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) is implemented to identify the number of time-use patterns in each country, using the response of 14 out-of-school activities (Housework, Care, Family labor, Paid labor, Extra class, Study, Religious activity, Time outside, Sports, Relax with family, Watch TV, Use social media, Play electronic games, Do nothing). Second, multivariate regression analysis is conducted for each country to examine the variation of children’s SWB by their time-use patterns. The SWB is measured by the adjusted version of Heubner(1994)’s Student Life Satisfaction Scale (Casas, 2017). Gender and the level of material deprivation are controlled.

Results:

LPAs showed that children’s time-use patterns were categorized into 4-6 profiles in each Asian country. There was a common time-use profile that was comparatively inactive in 14 domains of out-of-school activity across countries. Children who were classified as this profile were one of the most materially deprived group in each country. Subsequent regression analyses revealed three results: First, compared to other children who actively participate either in leisure (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Nepal) or family-centered work (Sri Lanka, Nepal), the group of children who showed overall inactivity reported the lowest SWB; Second, children whose time-use pattern were characterized as ‘Sedentary’ showed relatively lower SWB (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia); Third, mobile device reliant leisure activities were not advantageous to children’s SWB even in countries where possessing a mobile device is less common for children (Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Nepal).

Conclusions and Implications:

Findings provide important implications for interventions that aim to advance children’s well-being across countries. First, it is necessary to provide a set of opportunities to participate in diverse activities to the less advantaged group of children within each country in order to prevent material deprivation leads to a lethargic daily routine and lower SWB. Second, the ways to foster well-balanced usage of personal device need to be developed for both high- and lower-income countries.