Subjective Well-Being and Vulnerability of Children During the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic, including social distancing measures, influenced children’s lives all over the world. In this chapter, we aim to examine how the Covid-19 pandemic has increased children’s vulnerability and affected their subjective well-being. It provides a brief overview of the pandemic-related changes in evaluations of the overall subjective well-being (SWB) of European 9–13-year-old children. Based on data from the International Children’s Worlds Covid-19 Supplement Survey (ISCWeB) collected in 2021 mostly between the peaks of the second and third waves of the pandemic, four profiles of overall change in SWB were detected—for some children SWB decreased a bit (“slight decliners”) or much (“great decliners”), but for others it remained the same (“no changers”) or even increased (“gainers”). Taking Estonia as an example, we outline the possible sources of vulnerability for children. Using ISCWeB Supplemental data and enriching this with evidence from qualitative studies conducted among children in Estonia, the in-depth focus was on aspects related to home and school and children’s emotional state.