Sport, an engine to empower youth well-being? (2016)

This study attempted to empirically demonstrate whether young people living in poverty experienced lower levels of well-being. Moreover, this thesis aimed to explain the assumptions that social exclusion, objective, perceived and emotional health are a positive result from sport participation, and impact levels of well-being. This thesis makes use of the CILS4EU dataset in order to first test whether living in poverty influences well-being, and if sport participation mediates this relationship. Secondly, the dataset is used in order to determine what benefits sport participation possibly brings in order to explain these well-being levels. The dataset consists of young people of the age from twelve to sixteen. The results show that sport participation can contribute to experienced levels of well-being of young people living in poverty situations in the Netherlands (b=0.12, p<0.01). Additionally, the assumptions that social inclusion (b= 0.01, p=<0.01), perceived (b=0.04, p=<0.01) and emotional (b=0.05, p=<0.01) health are positive effects of sport participation, which explain the higher levels of well-being of young people that sport more frequently are accepted. Objective health (BMI) does not contribute significantly to this relationship.