Youth activities and children’s subjective well-being in Korea

This paper studies whether children’s participation in youth activities affects subjective well-being (SWB). We exploit a nationally representative longitudinal survey, the Korea Children and Youth Panel Survey waves 2010 and 2012, to conduct our analysis. Three measures of SWB, happiness, joy, and worry, are in use in this study. The respondents were in grade 1 of middle school (age 13) in 2010 and grade 3 in 2012. The fixed effects regressions show that longer participation hours associate with higher overall happiness and more joy, but do not significantly correlate with worry. Moreover, some activities such as adventure and environment programs associate with a higher level of SWB than other programs or activities do. We also find that various environmental factors affect children’s SWB.