Social disadvantage, subjective well-being and coping strategies in childhood: The case of northeastern Brazil

The study presented here focuses on northeastern Brazil and aims to analyse the relationship among children's situation of social disadvantage -as reported by children-, subjective well-being and coping. The sample analysed comprises 864 pre-adolescents in the final year of primary and first year of secondary education (age range 10–15) attending 27 randomly-selected state-run and private schools in the province of Ceará. The administered questionnaire contains: (a) items related to situations of multidimensional social disadvantage combined within an index, (b) three psychometric scales of subjective well-being, and (c) a measure of coping strategies and styles (cognitive-behavioural distraction, acting out and active strategies). Results indicate that the social disadvantage index predicts subjective well-being as measured by any of the three indicators used here; however, the perception of social disadvantage reported by children using different indicators seems to increase with age. Children reporting situations of greater social disadvantage according to this index exhibit significantly lower subjective well-being scores; children using the distraction coping strategy tend to display higher scores and children using the acting out coping strategy tend to display lower scores on the subjective well-being indicators. Surprisingly, girls in this sample report using acting out coping estrategies more frequently than boys.