Child Well-being: its measurement and relevant dimensions
Abstract
Promoting the development of children's social well-being in early childhood is a huge challenge for developing countries. Studying the relationship between the main components of early childhood well-being helps to understand and rethink policies focused on this stage of life. The aim of this study is to analyze the main dimensions related to children well-being, particularly child development (ASQ 3 and CBCL), nutritional status, parenting practices, household characteristics and mother´s social protection. Through these dimensions, an index of child welfare (IBI) was constructed with Alkire y Foster methodology using a novel database, and some of the channels that affect the index were explored, such as the early educational attendance and mental health of the mother. The child well-being index for Uruguay shows a result of 0.892, implying that around 34% of children between 2 and 6 years old are deprived on well-being, being the dimensions of Child Development and Social Protection the ones that contribute the most. 66% of the remaining children have a sufficient level of well-being, showing that they have on average sufficient well-being in 68% of the indicators. Additionally, differences in terms of sufficiency and absence of well-being were studied according to age, region and sex, being the last characteristic where greater differences are verified, showing lower well-being in boys.
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References
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