“I Get to See Another Day”: Examining Where Black and Latinx Youth From Economically Disenfranchised Chicago Neighborhoods Find Happiness

Abstract

The goal of this research is to document and contextualize sources of happiness for Black and Latinx youth living in economically disenfranchised, Chicago neighborhoods. We examined youth’s open-ended responses to the question “What makes you happiest in life?” The sample consists of 409 Black (73%) and Latinx (27%) youth (54% female; on average 15 years old, SD = 0.80). Using an inductive process, we developed relevant codes and applied them to the data. Whereas previous research has found that youth are happiest when they take a break from their routine lives (i.e., leisure), we find that youth include aspects of their daily lives in their concepts of happiness, including financial security and wellbeing, social support, spirituality, and goodwill and service. Youth’s in-depth reflections on what makes them happy are contextualized with quantitative data describing their experiences with structural oppression including poverty, financial hardship, neighborhood poverty, and exposure to violence. We find that youth find happiness despite, often by resisting, the structural constraints in their lives. These findings highlight that for Black and Latinx youth happiness may not solely be an emotional state, but also a strategy for coping with structural oppression.