An Index of Child Well-being in the European Union

While the living conditions of children and young people in the European Union have gained increasing recognition across the EU, the well-being of children is not monitored on the European level. Based on a rights-based, multi-dimensional understanding of child well-being we analyse data already available for the EU 25, using series data as well as comparative surveys of children and young people. We compare the performance of EU Member States on eight clusters with 23 domains and 51 indicators and give a picture of children’s overall well-being in the European Union. The clusters are children’s material situation, housing, health, subjective well-being, education, children’s relationships, civic participation and risk and safety

Children's subjective well-being : International comparative perspectives

We are enjoined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to take account of the views of children. One way this can be done is by asking children about their lives in sample surveys. This paper is a comparison of the results obtained to sample survey questions on subjective well-being of children at two contrasting levels of analysis - international macro (European Union 29) and national level micro (England). At both levels, children¿s well-being is accessed in terms of three subjective domains: (1) personal well-being, (2) relational well-being, and (3) well-being at school. At the micro level we also explore neighbourhood well-being. The results show that at the macro level personal well-being is associated with the material and housing circumstances but not family relationships or family structure. Well-being at school is not associated with any variable. Subjective health is only associated with family structure. At the micro level, although many of the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of children are found to be associated with their well-being in the four domains, these factors explain only a small amount of the variation in these well-being domains

Public expenditure on social security

Social security is by far the largest public expenditure programme and now accounts for a quarter of all public expenditure. Unlike most of the other expenditure programmes, social security has up to now been protected from intentional cuts: there has been controversy about whether benefits have been increased sufficiently to maintain their value but no government since the war has explicitly admitted that it intended to cut benefits to reduce expenditure on social security. The Conservative government elected in 1979 changed all this. They plan to reduce public expenditure in volume terms over the four years 1980/1-1983/4 and social security has not escaped the axe. The proposals for cuts are discussed later in this chapter but first, in order to indicate why public expenditure on social security has managed to avoid earlier cuts by successive governments and why the present government's plans are so significant, it would be useful to outline the special nature of social security expenditur