Boys’ better experience of well-being, compared to girls, shows clearly in life satisfaction, experience of health, mental wellbeing and social relationships, for example. The only experiences where the situation of boys was worse than that of the girls were certain aspects related to disruptive behaviour and safety. Very good experiences around the family’s financial situation also reflect positively on life satisfaction, experience of health, mental well-being, social relationships or the safety and security of the social environment.
The new study is based on the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare’s School Health Promotion study and its responses from Helsinki’s schools. The study observed various factors related to the person or their family background and their link to the experience of well-being, health and safety.
Family background defines a young adult’s experience of well-being
Of the family background factors, the type of family the young adult lives in has a significant effect on well-being. Young adults that live with both parents often stand out positively in many indicators compared to children with parents that have separated as well as children from single-parent families. The daily rhythm of young adults that live with both parents is more likely to be regular and they are less likely to feel insecure or unsafe in their social environment.
Ethnicity was also a point of review in the study. A link between the child’s gender and ethnicity was revealed as well. Ethnically Finnish girls were more likely to have experiences of anxiety, depression or public harassment than girls with a foreign background. In boys, differences in ethnicity showed particularly in the experience of a safe social environment. Boys from foreign backgrounds were more likely to have experiences of discrimination, parental violence, harassment or bullying than ethnically Finnish boys.
Background factors influence the experience of well-being
A key observation made in this study was that gender and the experience of the family’s financial situation in particular – both together and separately – shape the experience of well-being for many young people. A very good financial situation in the family was found to not protect girls as well as it does boys.
It is particularly boys who feel like their family’s financial situation is very good whose well-being is better than the other groups. Conversely, girls who feel that their family’s financial situation is at best reasonable stand out negatively in many aspects of well-being. For example, nearly half of the population group has moderate or high feelings of anxiety, while that share in other groups falls to 30 per cent or significantly lower.
“Girls who feel like their family’s financial situation is at best reasonable seem to be having more difficulties with well-being than other population groups in Helsinki. It might be good to try and better understand the connections between gender and the family’s socio-economic position from the perspective of bridging the well-being gap between population groups,” says Senior Researcher Suvi Määttä from the City of Helsinki.
