Abstract
We propose a strategy for studying the level of living of young people based on survey information from children themselves, combined with information from parents and administrative records. In this way, children become the prime informants of their own conditions, at the same time as we get reliable information on their family context, such as the household economy and parental characteristics, from other sources. We base our over-arching theoretical idea on a definition of level of living in terms of command over resources in several areas of life; resources with which children can actively shape their own lives, according to age and maturity. The focus on scope of action leads us to prefer descriptive rather than evaluative indicators. We define empirical indicators along eight broad dimensions of the level of living of young people which we use in a survey of 10–18-year-olds, the Swedish Child-LNU (n = 1,304, response rate = 76,6%), connected to the Level-of-Living Survey, LNU2000, done on adults, i.e., the children’s parents. We report descriptive results showing that the overall level of living of young people in Sweden is very high, but that children to lone parents and immigrants lag behind on some indicators. A worry for the future is the relatively high incidence of poor psychological well-being and psychosomatic problems.
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Notes
It is not necessary to start with a survey on adults—in our case this was just a matter of convenience. One could alternatively start with a sample of children, though it may turn out to be more problematic to identify the sample frame (but sampling pupils or schools may in many cases solve such a problem).
It should be mentioned that for children with separated parents we have no direct information from the biological parent currently not living in the child’s household (and in the few cases where the spouse was the only biological parent in the household and did not respond, we have no information from any of the biological parents).
For children living in the household, but who are older than 18 years of age, we ask about their education and economic status. For children (of all ages) who do not live with the respondent, we ask questions about, among other things, contact frequency and how far away they live.
An example at the level of indicators is that we do not ask people whether they find their dwelling small or not, letting them judge for themselves; instead we ask them how many rooms and square meters their dwelling has and how many people live in it, and from this information we calculate a measure of “crowding”.
The importance of studying children’s well-being multi-dimensionally has also been stressed by Thornton (2001, pp. 437–438), as the first out of 18 recommendations for research on children by the “Family and Child Well-Being Research Network”. Furthermore, the multidimensional view is common to the UN child convention as well as the “Child Indicator Movement” (Ben Arieh et al. 2001). There have also been, it should be noted, repeated attempts to construct composite indices in order to describe changes over time and differences between groups more efficiently (e.g., Anderson Moore et al. 2007). One problem with such approach, of course, is that it does not make much sense to report stability in children’s living conditions if, say, material conditions are improving whereas psychological well-being is deteriorating over time.
There is no strong theoretical basis for the exact definitions of dimensions. As we readily acknowledge, several living conditions could be placed in two or more of our dimensions, and these, in turn, could be expanded to include sub-dimensions, or some dimensions could be merged. Table 1 should rather be seen as a way of going from the general theoretical multidimensional resource perspective to practical empirical study. It could be noted, however, that lists of important domains for adults (e.g., Johansson 1979) as well as for children (e.g., Ben-Arieh et al. 2001; UNICEF 2007; EC 2008) are fairly universal, and that the dimensions we discern have a strong resemblance to those singled out also in studies of subjective well-being (e.g., Cummins 1996).
The questionnaire is downloadable at http://www2.sofi.su.se/LNU2000/child.pdf.
In 1999, 1% of the 16-year-olds in Sweden, 2% of the 17-year-olds, and 5.5% of the 18-year-olds did not live with a parent or other adult “replacing the parent” (Statistics Sweden 2000, Tab. 4:1a). In our survey, one respondent has a child who lives in an institution and therefore was not included in the sample. An additional eleven children did not live with either of their parents at the time of interview.
The definition is that the dwelling has central heating, running hot and cold water, bath or shower, modern kitchen, and water closet.
We cannot, however, determine the causal order in this cross-sectional survey. It may for instance be that those who have low well-being feel socially excluded because of that, or that they act in a way that make them become excluded although the cause is not the relationships in the first place.
We restrict the analysis to indirect reports from biological (and adoptive) parents only because they are more likely than stepparents to have correct information on the child.
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Jonsson, J.O., Östberg, V. Studying Young People’s Level of Living: The Swedish Child-LNU. Child Ind Res 3, 47–64 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-009-9060-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-009-9060-8