Assessing Child Development: A Critical Review and the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI)

Abstract

Abstract:Children are an important stakeholder group for sustainable development, as they represent the interface between current and future generations. A comprehensive assessment of child development (CD) in the context of sustainable development is still missing. In this paper, as a first step, a literature review is conducted to identify relevant aspects and gaps related to the assessment of CD. The main issues of CD are categorized into seven themes: health, education, safety, economic status, relationships, participation, and newly proposed environmental aspects. The corresponding subthemes and criteria are classified accordingly (e.g., nutrition, child mortality, immunization, etc., are assigned to the theme health). However, gaps in current studies, such as the heterogeneous classification of relevant aspects, regional and societal bias in addressing certain aspects, the limited number of subthemes, and criteria and the missing inclusion of environmental aspects impede the assessment of sustainable child development. To address the existing gaps, a comprehensive framework, the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI), is proposed. The SCDI is based on sustainable development as the core value, considers relevant aspects of CD with regard to newly-proposed environmental aspects and includes 26 aspects on an outcome and 37 indicators on a context level to tackle the heterogeneous classifications and interdependencies of relevant aspects. The proposed index intends to strengthen the stakeholder perspective of children in sustainability assessment. OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 4974

The Involvement of Future Generations in the Circular Economy Paradigm: An Empirical Analysis on Aluminium Packaging Recycling in Spain

“…Thus, based on the fact that some of the stakeholders' perceptions came from their education, this study considers the importance of environmental learning in children to modify the future behaviour of stakeholders. Besides, children are currently a strategic stakeholder [13] because they can act as prescribers at their homes and transmit "recycling culture" to their families and their environment [14]. Despite the high effectiveness of environmental education in young people [15], there has been little discussion about their current knowledge and opinions about nature and environmental issues [16].…”

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“…For instance, the theme health specifies 17 subthemes (e.g., child mortality, risk behavior, mental health), described by 44 criteria (e.g., infant mortality, suicide, adolescent fertility), measured by 48 indicators (e.g., infant mortality rate, suicide rate and adolescent fertility rate). Details of topic and indicator collection and classification can be found in Chang et al [17,20]. Figure 1 displays the overall structure of the SCDI framework.…”

“…On the basis of previous work of the authors [17,20], this study aims at establishing the SCDI by fine-tuning the indicator set, calculating the SCDI for countries, and analyzing the similarity between the SCDI and existing development indices.…”

“…To address those aforementioned three gaps, Chang et al [17] proposed the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) framework which considers children as a stakeholder group, includes environmental aspects such as resource accessibility, and applies an indicator set based on available statistical data. Sustainable child development refers to a development that supports children to meet their needs in the present living state and protects children in order for them to have the ability for shaping their future prospects.…”

“…Figure 1. Structure of the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) framework (exemplary criteria and indicator are presented for the subtheme attendance of education and highlighted in dark grey), adapted from Chang et al [17,20].…”