Contributors of Singaporean youths' wellbeing: Life goals, family-community-nation capitals, opportunity and social mobility

• Main Author: HO, Kong Weng
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: Singapore; youth; survey; well-being; education; Asian Studies; Behavioral Economics; Family, Life Course, and Society
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2250; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/3249/viewcontent/Wellbeing_2018_NYCResearch_Compilation.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Life goals induce one’s current investment and set one’s expectations of future outcomes, affecting one’s current state of subjective wellbeing. Using National Youth Survey (NYS) 2016, which has a representative sample of Singaporean youths, we find that non-zero-sum life goals such as family-oriented life goals and altruism-oriented life goals enhance happiness and life satisfaction of Singaporean youths while career-oriented life goals, zero-sum in nature, reduce subjective wellbeing. Apart from personal motivations or life aspirations, perceived social mobility (in terms of career opportunity and meritocracy) matters positively in the subjective wellbeing of both youths in school and in the workforce. Family support and national capital (constructed using items on national pride, support for nation during crisis, sense of belonging, role in developing nation) are also important contributors to youths’ subjective wellbeing. Given family support is an important contributor to wellbeing, shrinking family size and rising divorce rate pose challenges to the wellbeing of youths. Our exploratory empirics showed an improvement of intergenerational education mobility over the various waves of NYS, and that upward mobility is an important channel of up-lifting the subjective wellbeing of youths in Singapore. Maintaining mobility and meritocracy are critical to youths’ wellbeing as the Singapore economy matures to a lower steady-state growth rate.