Recent advancements in child well-being research have shown an increased interest in the
importance of subjective well-being. The development of instruments and scales to measure
subjective well-being among children and adolescents is in its infancy. Furthermore, there are
few existing cross-cultural studies with child and adolescent populations. Validation of
existing measures and cross-cultural comparisons has been identified by a number of
researchers as critical in contributing to the international dialogue. In the current study, two
measures of subjective well-being (Student Life Satisfaction Scale and Personal Well-Being
Index-School Children) are tested among a sample of children in the Western Cape region of
South Africa. Noting the diversity of experience between children from different socioeconomic
status groups in South Africa, the study further aims to determine the extent to
which the measures are comparable across socio-economic status groups. Data from the
Children’s World Survey were used; and includes a sample of 1004 children randomly
selected from 15 schools within the Cape Town Metropole. Confirmatory factor analysis was
used to test the overall fit structure and multi-group factor analysis, with Scalar and Metric
invariance constraints. The results show appropriate fit structure for the overall model, with
Scalar and Metric factor invariance tenable across socio-economic status groups. The overall
findings suggest that the two measures are appropriate for use with children from low and
medium socio-economic status groups in the Western Cape province of South Africa.