What is wrong with children's well-being in the UK? Questions of meaning and measurement1

Abstract

This paper discusses problems with existing attempts to measure children's well-being using secondary datasets, taking as an example the UNICEF Innocenti report entitled Child poverty in perspective: an overview of child well-being in rich countries (UNICEF 2007). The report placed the UK's children at the bottom of the league table of rich nations on their average score across six dimensions, including emotional well-being and ‘happiness’. The report's authors point to a number of problems with the available data and their uses of them. We seek to engage in a critical debate about the value of the report. We argue that it exemplifies a deficit model approach to the study of children's lives, as it appears to seek to demonstrate negative aspects of children's experiences. Its findings are frequently cited as scientific ‘fact’ in press reports about children and young people. In this paper, we discuss some problems with definitions of ‘well-being’, how well-being is measured, and how children's (human) rights are invoked. We also discuss the potential of research that takes a more positive approach to researching children's health, well-being and everyday lives.