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A Review Essay on the Measurement of Child Well-Being

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Abstract

Research on indicators related to the state of child well-being is a growing field that has experienced several changes over time. The growing supply of data on children, as well as the need to facilitate conclusions and to track trends, has led researchers to develop a number of child well-being indexes. This paper critically reviews the most recent and relevant child well-being indexes, i.e., the Index of Child and Youth Well-Being in the United States, the Child Well-being Index for the European Union, the Microdata Child Well-being Index, and the Deprivation Index. The study focuses primarily on the contributions and innovations the indexes have brought to the field, making a critical assessment of the methods used in the construction of the indexes and identifying their main limitations.

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Notes

  1. Henceforth, the abbreviation “CRC” will be used when referring to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

  2. Other research works could be mentioned at this point, but our aim here is not to go into all that has been done in the field, but rather to provide an overview of the main developments in the measurement of child well-being, leading to this paper’s main focus, the construction of composite child well-being indexes. For more on earlier works in this domain, references can be found in Ben-Arieh (2000) and Ben-Arieh and Goerge (2001). For other early works exclusively dedicated to children, see also Cornia and Danziger (Eds.) (1997a, b), Brooks-Gunn et al. (Eds.) (volumes I and II—1997a, b), Micklewright and Stewart (2000), Vleminckx and Smeeding (Eds.) (2001), Bradshaw (Ed.) (2002) or Ridge (2004).

  3. See also Table 2 in the Appendix.

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Acknowledgments

This paper counted on financial support from the Science and Technology Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia—FCT), of the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Superior Education, as part of a PhD Scholarship funded by this institution.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Portuguese Catholic University (UCP)—Faculty of Economics and Management (FEG), Rua Diogo Botelho, 1327, 4169-005, Porto, Portugal

    Liliana Fernandes & Américo Mendes

  2. CEF.UP, Faculty of Economics (FEP), University of Porto, INESC Porto, OBEGEF, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-464, Porto, Portugal

    Aurora A. C. Teixeira

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  1. Liliana Fernandes
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  2. Américo Mendes
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  3. Aurora A. C. Teixeira
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Correspondence to Liliana Fernandes.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 2.

Table 2 Methods and interpretation, contributions and limitations of the Indexes
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Fernandes, L., Mendes, A. & Teixeira, A.A.C. A Review Essay on the Measurement of Child Well-Being. Soc Indic Res 106, 239–257 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9814-9

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