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Community and Place-Based Understanding of Child Well-Being

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Handbook of Child Well-Being

Abstract

Where children live matters for their well-being. The neighborhood and community context has an immediate bearing on what children experience day to day and consequences for their long-term life chances. The quality of local public services, the prevalence of crime and violence, the quality of the natural and built environment, the influences of peers and social networks, and the proximity to jobs and resources can all act to either diminish the well-being of children and families or enhance their prospects. A substantial body of social science research finds that growing up in disinvested, distressed, or socially and economically isolated neighborhoods is associated with an increased risk of many adverse outcomes for children, including school failure, poor health, victimization, delinquency, teen child-bearing, and youth unemployment (Brooks-Gunn et al. 1997; Ellen et al. 2001; Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn 2003). Yet even though place-based disparities in child well-being are well documented and of significant public policy concern, the complex dynamics that connect individuals and neighborhoods have made it challenging to fully understand the important processes or to formulate effective action to improve the community context for child well-being.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44122, USA

    Prof. Claudia J. Coulton

  2. Center for Clinical Investigation, Case School of Medicine, 2103 Cornell Rd., Cleveland, OH, 44106-7291, USA

    James C. Spilsbury

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  1. Prof. Claudia J. Coulton
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  2. James C. Spilsbury
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Correspondence to Claudia J. Coulton .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Asher Ben-Arieh

  2. Research Institute of Quality of Life, University of Girona, Girona, Spain

    Ferran Casas

  3. Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Ivar Frønes

  4. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

    Jill E. Korbin

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Coulton, C.J., Spilsbury, J.C. (2014). Community and Place-Based Understanding of Child Well-Being. In: Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frønes, I., Korbin, J. (eds) Handbook of Child Well-Being. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_54

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