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We are enjoined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to take account of the views of children. One way this can be done is by asking children about their lives in sample surveys. This paper is a comparison of the results obtained to sample survey questions on subjective well-being of children at two contrasting levels of analysis-international macro (European Union 29) and national level micro (England). At both levels, children"s well-being is accessed in terms of three subjective domains: (1) personal well-being, (2) relational well-being, and (3) well-being at school. At the micro level we also explore neighbourhood well-being. The results show that at the macro level personal well-being is associated with the material and housing circumstances but not family relationships or family structure. Well-being at school is not associated with any variable. Subjective health is only associated with family structure. At the micro level, although many of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of children are found to be associated with their well-being in the four domains, these factors explain only a small amount of the variation in these well-being domains.

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Nursing is often associated with providing working-class women a route to upward social mobility. This article argues that although nursing is a relatively open profession, the impact of social class endures, with the main division between nurses who are from higher professional backgrounds and the rest. We utilise the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) to explore nurses’ social origins; the relationship between background and economic, social, and cultural capital; and the impact of origin and capitals on income (and inferred career trajectory). While recognising the methodological limitations of the GBCS, we suggest there may be a ‘class ceiling’ in nursing, and that class advantages are still significant in lower professions of the public sector. Class identification endures regardless of whether nurses have been upwardly or downwardly mobile. We also suggest future directions for intragenerational mobility and gender in social mobility research and make a case for longitudinal and qualitative analysis of nurses’ trajectories. Our findings indicate that the downwardly mobile children of the middle classes retain their classed advantages as they establish their own careers.

There has been a growing interest among academics, policy makers and practitioners in the subjective well-being of children and young people (CYP). The recognition of CYP’s rights to having a good childhood and good future life chances, coupled with the injunction from the New Sociology of Childhood to consult with CYP as active agents have also resulted in an increasing interest in the use of well-being as a key concept in policy programmes in many countries. In recent years, child well-being has become a priority for the European political agenda. However, the main challenge for the European Union (EU) is to develop the best policies and approaches to effectively improve the well-being of children and young people using the most robust and suitable sources of data. This article identifies research gaps on children and young people’s subjective well-being and discusses the policy relevance of longitudinal survey in the context of the EU strategy for CYP. It is argued that a longitudinal survey would fulfil research gaps and provide invaluable data for the European Union and its member states for monitoring and evaluation of existing policies on children and young people’s well-being and developing future polices supported by robust data.