Environment and child well-being Introduction

In recent years there has been a growing interest in understanding how the particular environment in which children and youth develop affect later outcomes. The articles in this special issue all examine ways in which the larger environment is related to children's well-being. In this introduction, we describe some of the historical research "highlights" showing how the environment affects well-being from several disciplines, discuss current trends in environmentally-based research, provide a short review of the literature on the effects of the environment for children and review, and discuss remaining challenges. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.