Social Relationships as Mediators of Material Deprivation, School Bullying Victimization, and Subjective Well-Being among Children Across 25 Countries: A Global and Cross-National Perspective

Material deprivation is often hypothesized to be directly linked with children’s school bullying victimization and their subjective well-being. However, studies do not consistently support this hypothesis. Furthermore, the quality of children’s social relationships with family, peers, and teachers have been suggested as potential mediators of material deprivation, school bullying victimization, and subjective well-being. However, studies supporting such proposition are lacking. Using a global sample of 73,182 children aged 10 and 12 years from 25 countries/regions in the third wave of an International Survey of Children’s Well-Being, the present study examined a model of how quality of family-child, peer, and teacher-child relationships mediate the association of material deprivation with school bullying victimization and subjective well-being. The results show that the proposed model is applicable to each country and to different sex and age groups globally. It is also consistently found that among all countries, the family-child relationship is the strongest mediator between material deprivation and subjective well-being, while peer relationship is the strongest mediator between material deprivation and school victimization. These findings imply that although each country has different cultural, political, and economic backgrounds and social welfare systems, once children experience material deprivation, regardless of the country where they live, the quality of their relationships with family, peers, and teachers is likely to be deteriorated, which in turn reduces their subjective well-being and increases their risk of being bullied at school. In particular, children would most likely to experience low levels of subjective well-being through poor family-child relationships and most likely to experience school victimization through poor peer relationships. Our findings provide evidence for policymakers and practitioners worldwide, supporting efforts to improve the quality of social relationships among economically deprived children in order to reduce negative effects of material deprivation on children's school bullying victimization and subjective well-being.