Urban Mobility and Subjective Well-Being among Brazilian Children

Urban mobility is understood as the condition of displacement of people in urban areas to carry out daily activities. The investigation of children's autonomous urban mobility can contribute to the understanding of children's subjective well-being. This article aims to verify the relationship between urban mobility related to autonomy and subjective well-being among Brazilian children, and to assess the association of gender and age with autonomous mobility related to taking the home-school-home path alone. Participants were 1787 children (M = 11.33; SD = 1.23), living in five Brazilian state capitals. For this study, sociodemographic data, items referring to Urban mobility related to children's autonomy, and a scale for evaluation of subjective well-being were used. Through binary logistic regression results indicate that playing in streets/parks or open spaces in the city without an adult more often increases the chance of the child having higher well-being, as well as going to and from school accompanied by an adult. Otherwise, frequency of using public transport without an adult and the frequency of going to and returning from school alone were predictors of lower well-being. The implications on the conditions offered to children by Brazilian cities are discussed.