Measurement and Analysis of Child Well-Being in Middle and High Income Countries

63 Pages Posted: 27 Dec 2007

See all articles by Almas Heshmati

Almas Heshmati

Sogang University; Jönköping International Business School

Chemen S. J. Bajalan

Queen's University Belfast

Arno Tausch

University of the Free State, Department of Political Studies and Governance; University of Innsbruck - Department of Political Science

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: December 2007

Abstract

Starting from the recent UNICEF publications on child poverty in the developed countries, which received a wide audience in the political and scientific world, in this paper we further analyze the UNICEF study data base and present three composite indices that are multidimensional and quantitatively measures of child well-being. While the original UNICEF studies simply added together the ranks on different measurement scales, we present a much more sophisticated approach, with the first of our indicators being a non-parametric measure while the remaining two are parametric. In the non-parametric index of child welfare, the well-being indicators are given same weights in their aggregation to form different components from which an overall index is being constructed. Two different forms of the parametric index are estimated by using principal component analysis. The first model uses a pool of all indicators without classification of the indicators by type of well-being, while the second model estimates first the sub-components separately and then uses the share of variance explained by each principal component to compute the weighted average of each component and their aggregation into an index of overall child well-being. The indices indicate which countries have the best system of child welfare and show how child well-being varies across countries and regions. The indices are composed of six well-being components: material, health and safety, educational well-being, family and peer relationships, behaviours and risks and subjective well-being. Each of the components is generated from a number of well-being sub-indicators.

Keywords: child well-being, multidimensional index, principal component, child poverty, child outcomes, OECD

JEL Classification: D31, I10, I20, I30, J13

Suggested Citation

Heshmati, Almas and Bajalan, Chemen S. J. and Tausch, Arno, Measurement and Analysis of Child Well-Being in Middle and High Income Countries (December 2007). IZA Discussion Paper No. 3203, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1078897 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1078897

Almas Heshmati (Contact Author)

Sogang University ( email )

Seoul 121-742
Korea, Republic of (South Korea)
0082-2-705-8771 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.sogang.ac.kr/english/academic/03_under_0123.html

Jönköping International Business School ( email )

Jönköping, 551 11
Sweden

Chemen S. J. Bajalan

Queen's University Belfast ( email )

25 University Square
Belfast, BT7 1NN
Ireland

Arno Tausch

University of the Free State, Department of Political Studies and Governance ( email )

205 Nelson Mandela Drive
Park West
Bloemfontein, Free State 9300
South Africa

University of Innsbruck - Department of Political Science ( email )

Universitätsstrasse 15
Innsbruck, Tirol 6020
Austria

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