The paper presents the first findings of the children’s subjective well-being survey in Poland, which was conducted among representative sample of over 3000 pupils aged 8, 10 and 12 years from Wielkopolska region in spring 2014. The study is a part of International Survey of Children’s Well-being (ISCWeB) - Children’s Worlds, developed by the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI). The main purpose of the ISCWeB project is to gain a broad knowledge of children’s lives, their relationships with family members and friends, daily activities, time use and, in particular, their own perceptions and evaluations of their well-being. A particular attention in this paper is paid to the children’s subjective well-being including overall satisfaction with life, measured with use of different psychometric scales, eg. the single item scale on Overall Life Satisfaction (OLS) or the five-item Students Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS5). Along with overall well-being of the children, it is very important to study various domains of their well-being. In the paper we took into consideration children’s evaluation of their five important life domains: family, school, friends, living environment and self.

This paper presents a cross-national comparison of the influence of parental migration on children’s subjective well-being (SWB). While studies often focus on the economic implications of adult migration, research on its effects on children’s well-being is scarce, particularly in Europe. Data from surveys of over 13,500 school children in six European countries with a communist legacy were analysed. These were collected as part of Children’s Worlds - The International Study of Children’s Well-being (ISCWeB). The findings reveal that left-behind children generally have lower levels of SWB than non-left-behind children, with girls being more affected, and the gap in well-being increases with age. Left-behind status was also associated with lower family and school satisfaction. A hierarchical logistic regression model was used to explore the role of parental migration and family and school life satisfaction in predicting high SWB of children. While including family and school life satisfaction in the model weakened the association between parental migration and child SWB, the models’ explanatory power improved. This study emphasizes the need for further research in this area to better understand the complex dynamics between parental migration, children’s subjective well-being, and other factors. These insights are essential for developing targeted interventions and policies to support the well-being of left-behind children in migrant sending countries.

The original version of this article unfortunately published online with omitted acknowledgement statement.