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The Role of Family Policy in Explaining the International Variation in Child Subjective Well-Being

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Abstract

The article proposes an innovative analyse for cross-national differences in the subjective child well-being introducing new indicators and measures. This dimension addresses the issue of welfare support to parents and child early education. The question of this research is to what extend family policies can explain the variability of subjective child well-being components in different European countries. Based on this question, the two objective of this proposal are: (1) to review the existing literature with respect to conceptualization, measurement, and correlates of children’s subjective well-being, with a special emphasis on the context of family policies and family well-being in different European welfare states, and (2) to analyse the relation between these policies and subjective child well-being. In order to get these aims we have elaborated two indexes: the index of child subjective well-being and family policy index. Data for HBSC (Health Behaviour in School-aged Children) for the first index and data from OECD Family Database is used to build these indicators. We found that the index of child subjective well-being is comparatively higher in those countries where family policies are more generous in the areas of preschool education, family services, family spending and duration of paid parental leave.

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Fig. 1

Source: Health Behaviour of School Children Survey, 2009–2010

Fig. 2

Source: Health Behaviour of School Children Survey, 2009–2010 and OCDE, Family Database, 2011

Fig. 3

Source: Health Behaviour of School Children Survey, 2009–2010 and OCDE, Family Database, 2011

Fig. 4

Source: Health Behaviour of School Children Survey, 2009–2010 and OECDE, Family Database, 2011

Fig. 5

Source: Health Behaviour of School Children Survey, 2009–2010 and OECDE, Family Database, 2011

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Notes

  1. The indicators used by Bradshaw et al. (2013) to measure child subjective wellbeing are: life satisfaction, relationship (easy to talk to mother and father, relationship with friends), school life satisfaction, subjective health (health complaints).

  2. The scale runs from 1 (most supportive and subjective wellbeing) to 0 (least supportive and subjective wellbeing).

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  1. Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of Valladolid, Campus María Zambrano, Plaza de la Universidad, 40005, Segovia, Spain

    Almudena Moreno Mínguez

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This article has been supported by the research project on “The father involvement and child well-being in Spain” (CSO2015-69439-R) publicly financed under the Spanish Research Agency.

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Mínguez, A.M. The Role of Family Policy in Explaining the International Variation in Child Subjective Well-Being. Soc Indic Res 134, 1173–1194 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1456-5

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