The Well-Being of America's Children: Developing and Improving the Child and Youth Well-Being Index (Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research Book 6)

In 1998, the Foundation for Child Development (FCD) provided Kenneth Land a grant to explore the feasibility of producing the first national composite index of the status of American children that would chart changes in their well-being over time. Important questions needed to be answered: was it possible to trace trends in child and youth well-being over several decades? Could such an index provide a way of determining whether the United States was making progress in improving its children’s lives? The Index of Child and Youth Well-Being (CWI) was born from these questions. Viewing the CWI trends from 1975 to present, there is evidence that the well-being of American children lags behind other Western nations. As conditions change, it is clear that the index is an evolving and rich enterprise. This volume attests to that evolution, and what the CWI promises for understanding the progress – or lack of progress – in enhancing the life prospects of all American children. ​ This volume attests to the evolution of the Child Well-Being Index and asks what it promises for understanding the progress - or lack of progress - in enhancing the life prospects of all American children. Recent research on the general problem of conceptualizing and measuring the well-being of children and young people is covered, as well as the conceptual foundations of the Child Well-Being Index and its methods of construction. Further, the authors assess the methodological issues involved in the construction of composite quality-of-life indices and the question of the extent to which the Child Well-Being Index can be scaled to apply meaningfully to levels of analysis below the national level. In the end, the questions of what this Index tells us about changes in child and youth well-being in the US across recent decades at national, state, and substate regional levels and in international comparisons, and which additional data series need to be developed so that the Index can be improved, is addressed Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction....Pages 1-12 Conceptual and Methodological Foundations of the Child and Youth Well-Being Index....Pages 13-27 The CWI and Its Components: Empirical Studies and Findings....Pages 29-75 Measuring Social Disparities via the CWI: Race-Ethnicity, Income, and Immigrant Status....Pages 77-120 Perceived Quality of Life Research on Children and Youth: Implications for a System of National Indicators....Pages 121-141 Issues in Composite Index Construction....Pages 143-159 Scalability of the CWI: State-Level Indicators and Composite Indices....Pages 161-187 Scalability of the CWI: Substate Regional Indicators and Composite Indices....Pages 189-224 Intergenerational and Cross-National Comparisons of Child and Youth Well-Being....Pages 225-238 Policy Connections and Practical Implications of the CWI....Pages 239-259 Conclusions and Future Directions....Pages 261-263 Back Matter....Pages 265-269