Abstract
In the last two decades, studies dealing with the measurement of children’s well-being have proliferated. These studies develop mainly from the need to address the topic from a multidimensional perspective, capable of integrating approaches into a more comprehensive view of reality. In this regard, key issues have been tackled and discussions are still open, such as those on the inclusion of boys and girls as active agents in the definition of their needs, or on the consideration of aspects that affect both present and future needs as part of well-being. The capability theory sets a very interesting theoretical framework within this context. This work will, first of all, try to approach the topic of children’s well-being from such perspective in conjunction with the Life Sustainability proposition. There is, however, no translation of these theoretical contributions to the development of indicators, even though the actual need for them is well acknowledged, given the political and social-action implications of bringing this progress to the realm of the tangible. There are two main reasons for this. First, the scarcity of data about children that could allow the empirical development of valid and reliable measurements in this field. Second, the methodological difficulty of appropriately defining this kind of factors, which are very often linked to subjective and/or intangible aspects, for quantification purposes. Keeping all this in mind, the second part of this work aims at making some progress in this direction and proposes a system of indicators to support what is first analyzed from a conceptual point of view.
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Notes
The concept of social reproduction is connected to the Marxist tradition and the discussion about domestic work held during the 1970s. As a biological and social phenomenon, it has been lately replaced by the term “care”, which, among other aspects, reflects the specificities that distinguish unpaid work from the work performed in the market sphere, instead of underlining their similarities.
Although autonomy, agency and self-determination are central to the Capabilities approach, there is no absolute consensus among the authors as to what extent this can be applied to the case of children. In particular, the works guided by “liberal justice theories” (like those of Saito and Nussbaum) object to the idea of children being mature enough to make the critical reflection required to plan their own lives and decide and evaluate what is good for them. They even speak of “a weak self-determination principle” (Fegter and Richter 2014, 748-9).
It is considered a post-crisis scenario, because the macroeconomic indicators are slowly improving in Spain. However, the impact of the austerity measures on the population’s well-being and living conditions needs to be observed, and it will probably be more deeply felt, in the long term.
Other authors have nevertheless condemned the Convention’s ambiguity, because, despite its promotion of children’s participation by giving “formal status to the concept of the child as social actor, able to negotiate in relations with adults […] the Convention also enunciates constraints on this agency through the inclusion of notions of competency and maturity” (Mason and Watson 2014, 2767).
For a detailed search on the last advances in the matter of children indicators, see the website of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for Children Indicators (South Africa, 2015): http://isci2015.org/
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We are grateful to the Consejería de Innovación, Empresa, Ciencia y Universidad de la Junta de Andalucía (Spain) for their support for this work.
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Domínguez-Serrano, M., del Moral Espín, L. From Relevant Capabilities to Relevant Indicators: Defining an Indicator System for Children’s Well-Being in Spain. Child Ind Res 11, 1–25 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-016-9415-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-016-9415-x