International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences 2017, Vol. 7, No. 4 ISSN: 2222-6990 538 www.hrmars.com Urban Youth Subjective Well-Being in Malaysia: Potential Factors Siti Aisyah Ramli¹, Bahaman Abu Samah², Asnarulkhadi Abu Samah³, Khairuddin Idris², Hayrol Azril Mohammed Shaffril¹ ¹Institute for Social Science Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Putra Infoport, Serdang, 43400, Selangor. ²Faculty of Education, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, 43400, Selangor. ³Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, 43400, Selangor. DOI: 10.6007/IJARBSS/v7-i4/2827 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v7-i4/2827 Abstract This conceptual paper aims to identify the potential factors for subjective well-being among urban youth in Malaysia. To understand urban youth’s subjective well -being is important as it offers a comprehensive view on the issue. Based on a review of literature and document analyses, it concludes that subjective well-being is not merely covering the tangible aspects such as physical infrastructure and the economy, but also the non-tangible aspects such as emotional, social, political, spiritual, psychological, happiness and others. Keywords: Urban Youth, Subjective Well-being, Youth Development Introduction To measure the level of community well-being is vital as it portrays the success of a country’s development program. Well-being is divided into two categories; the objective well-being (OWB) and the subjective well-being (SWB). Ivkovic, Ham and Mijoc (2014) defined OWB as an economic development (e.g. living conditions) while Diener et al.(1997) defined SWB as an individual’s evaluation of their own life, which includes their personal judgment or evaluation towards the current status of their life like life satisfaction.. McGillivary and Mathew (2006) on the other hand defined SWB as a life evaluation, comprising of three major aspects of life; cognitive judgments of life satisfaction, affective evaluation of moods and emotion, and experience. Within the Malaysian scope, most of the existing well-being studies are objective in nature. The Malaysian Well-being Index (formerly known as Malaysian Quality of Life Index) for example, is based on secondary data measurement (Economic Planning Unit, 2013). Having the objective perspective alone is insufficient as it covers only the calculation of tangible aspects of well- being, thus it is vital to produce a more subjective well-being study as it includes non-tangible aspects such as emotional, social, political, spiritual, psychological, happiness and others. Despite the mounting needs, the existing number of subjective studies is frustrating low. Generally,studies done in the past by Malaysian Well-being Index (2013), Institute for Youth