A Microdata Child Well-Being Index: Conceptualization, Creation, and Findings

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, a prominent stream of research has addressed the conceptualization and measurement of child well-being and the construction of child well-being indices. This paper extends this accumulating body of research in five ways. First, an index of child well-being for US children ages 6-11 is constructed using individual children (micro-data) as the unit of analysis rather than populationbased measures which have typically been used in the past. Second, the new index uses a recently developed US data source (National Survey of Children's Health) to incorporate far more measures related to child well-being (69) into an index than have been used in past efforts. Third, this research explicitly separates child outcome measures (measures of child well-being) from contextual measures (seen as measures of risk or inputs). Fourth, separate indices are developed for children age 6-11 and those aged 12-17. Fifth, analyses show that contextual indicators add significant albeit modest power over and above common demographic measures (age, gender, race/ethnicity) as predictors of individual differences in well-being among children.

The Structural Model of Child Well-Being

“…UNICEF 2007; O' Hare and Gutierrez 2012;Bradshaw et al 2007). Conversely, Moore et al (2008) have argued that economic well-being is a contextual resource of well-being. The authors' argument, however, rests on the view that especially in deprived life circumstances, such as famine, the material situation squarely reveals how children are faring and for that reason it is justifiable to regard material well-being as a vital dimension of well-being.…”

Child Vulnerability and Well-being among Farmer Families

“…According to Moore et al (2008) well-being of children can mean that a child who has had the status of individual biological (healthy lifestyle and overall health as well as the function), the psychological health of the individual (how people think about their own situation and how they get along in a social environment, including the ability to cope with the situation free from the problems that exist), social health (referring to basic skills in participating in constructive activities, as well as the ability to connect emotionally with family, friends, and the environment), and education or intellectual (skills associated with a person's ability to learn, remember, to apply cognitive skills and get involved with the school) good. Table 2 shows that the subjective well-being of children in psychological dimensions included in the low category (65.7%), whereas in the economic and social dimensions of subjective well-being of children, this tends to be high (51.4%).…”

A Weighted Multidimensional Index of Child Well-Being Which Incorporates Children’s Individual Perceptions

“…Following the general consensus in current work on child well-being indexes (e.g., Land et al 2001Land et al , 2007Moore et al , 2008Bradshaw et al 2007;Bastos et al 2008;Bastos and Machado 2009;Bradshaw and Richardson 2009; for a survey, see Fernandes et al 2012), a multidimensional approach is also taken here. This being said it is necessary to specify which dimensions are to be considered in order to assess child well-being and on what basis the choice of those dimensions is grounded.…”

“…Although some limitations remain-namely measuring children's perspectives of their own well-being is still not duly considered-, data on children has been growing rapidly (Ben-Arieh 2008;Fernandes et al 2012). This increase in the data available has led to some difficulties in drawing conclusions about how children are faring, especially when several dimensions of their well-being are considered, and that is basically why researchers have been called upon to build single summary indexes, in order to simplify the interpretation of data which is now abundant (Ben-Arieh 2008; Moore et al , 2008.…”

“…Several research studies both in the U.S. and Europe followed on from this work, namely those of Land et al (2007), Bradshaw et al (2007Bradshaw et al ( , 2009, Moore et al ( , 2008 and Bastos et al (2004Bastos et al ( , 2008Bastos et al ( , 2009. 1 However, improvements to the methodologies used in these studies are still required, be it because of the use of aggregated data, as is the case of Land et al (2001Land et al ( , 2007 and Bradshaw et al (2007Bradshaw et al ( , 2009, or because children's perspectives are generally overlooked, which is, for example, the case of Moore et al ( , 2008, who use microdata, but collected from parents and not from children. Another shortcoming, with the exception of very few papers, such as that by Bastos and Machado (2009), has to do with the fact that equal weights are assigned to each indicator used in the construction of the index.…”