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.