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

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 population-based 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.