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Well-being is considered a prerequisite for a number of outcomes, including academic achievement, and yet research reporting on the association between well-being and academic achievement yields ambiguous results. A systematic review into this association, in accordance with PRISMA guidelines was conducted in PubMed and PsycINFO from June to September 2017. Title, abstract, and full text were screened by two independent raters, and 22 articles were eligible. Results were inconsistent, reporting both positive association, no association or conflicting results. Studies reporting positive association were primarily cross-sectional, focused on relational aspects of well-being and on younger children, and used parent or teacher-ratings in addition to self-report. The conflicting studies indicated a need for future research into more specific aspects of well-being and academic achievement, preferably using longitudinal study designs.

This paper reflects on the opportunity to take steps in the direction of proposing international systems of subjective social indicators of children’s and adolescents’ well-being. In order to contextualize such a reflection, a brief summary of the historical and epistemological foundations of the concept of social indicators, and of some of the controversies associated with the research results during the first decades of its existence, is made. Such foundations, research results and consequent debates have mostly been developed considering only adult populations, but they are reviewed here to explore research goals in relation to children’s and adolescents’ well-being and to link these goals to political action and decision making and the evaluation of its impact. The lack of internationaly comparable subjective data on children’s and adolescents’ well-being at the macro level may be related, among other things, to the lack of political importance given to the younger population’s point of view and to the lack of consistent or convincing research at a micro-level indicating what data-collection instruments are appropriate for making cross-national or cross-cultural comparisons. However, at present, research on children’s and adolescents’ own points of view about their living conditions—although still in its early stages and very heterogeneous—is already showing rapid advances and even provocative and unexpected results, of which a few examples are given. Tested instruments are already available, but systematic data collection is still scarce, and comparable data to be used for international comparisons is infrequent. Systematic data collection of children’s and adolescents’ perceptions, evaluations and aspirations that can be used as subjective social indicators requires political will, associated with the conviction that such data can be useful for decision-making and for evaluating social change. An increasing international interest in children’s rights to social participation seems to be an opportunity to promote links with research on childrens’ and adolescents’ well-being, both objective and subjective. Having an overall panorama of all these elements may be helpful to guide debates on what research is still needed and on what are the major challenges to be faced when offering research data to policy makers and to the public opinion.

The firm agglomeration is often mentioned as an important factor for local economic growth. However, it is little known about whether the firm agglomeration can bring direct benefits for local children. In this paper, we attempt to examine the effects of the firm agglomeration on education and labor of local children in Vietnam. The firm agglomeration is measured by the firm revenue per capita at the district level. Although the firm agglomeration does not have significant effects on school enrolment, our study finds that firm agglomeration helps children improve the school quality (which is measured by the number of completed school grades). The firm agglomeration also reduces the probability to work for children. Interestingly, we find that firm agglomeration has a larger effect on girls than boys, and on disadvantageous groups of children such as rural, ethnic minorities, and those having lower education parents.

Mục đích chính của bài báo là xây dựng một chỉ số quyền trẻ em (CRI) để đo lường mức độ thực hiện quyền trẻ em tại các nước có nền kinh tế giàu có và so sánh mức độ quyền trẻ em giữa các nước này. Chúng tôi sử dụng ba lĩnh vực để đại diện cho quyền trẻ em tại các quốc gia phát triển nhằm đo lường quyền trẻ em: quyền lợi về phúc lợi, quyền đến giáo dục và quyền sức khoẻ. Mỗi lĩnh vực bao gồm ba loại chỉ số: nỗ lực công cộng, sự thỏa mãn nhu cầu cơ bản và điều kiện hiện tại. Trong phân tích so sánh, chúng tôi phát hiện ra sự khác biệt về quyền trẻ em giữa các nước có nền kinh tế phát triển. Chúng tôi cũng nhận thấy rằng các quyền trẻ em đạt được ở mức cao nhất tại các quốc gia có chính sách phúc lợi cao. Kết quả cho thấy bất bình đẳng kinh tế có tầm quan trọng lớn trong việc thực hiện quyền trẻ em, trong khi việc phê chuẩn hiệp định nhân quyền có ảnh hưởng hạn chế đến quyền trẻ em. Chúng tôi kết luận rằng các nỗ lực của chính phủ để tạo ra một xã hội bình đẳng là các yếu tố chính để thực hiện quyền trẻ em. Do đó, các quốc gia cần phát triển các kế hoạch nhằm đối phó với bất bình đẳng kinh tế để đạt được cải thiện quyền trẻ em trong tương lai.

The focus for this article is child poverty in a Nordic welfare state context. With data from two qualitative studies from Sweden and Norway, we discuss child poverty from the children’s point of view, in the framework of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, articles 27 and 28. In article 27, food, housing and clothing are mentioned as particularly important for an adequate standard of living. In poverty studies where children’s voices are being heard there has been little focus on these necessities. We find that a few of the children living with economic hardship experience a lack of necessities such as food, housing and clothing. We also explore whether children experience limited possibilities in relation to education. Despite of the state policies recognition of equal opportunities in relation to schooling, we find differences due to economy. In some cases this leads to young people dropping out of school to work. Overall we find that children take responsibility in relation to their families’ financial situation. In the final discussion we pay attention to the powerlessness of the children’s situation between the parents and the states’ responsibilities for providing for the children’s basic needs. We argue for the need for a discussion about the children’s position between rights and protection. If poor children are loaded with more responsibilities than their peers from better-off families, it will add to the burden of worry and distress in an already complicated situation.

Theoretical and empirical evidence illustrates that family and school are the important living environments for adolescent self-identity development. The current study aimed to use the latent profile analysis, a person-centered approach, to test the relation between multiple family and school environment profiles and adolescent self-identity. In the current study, we surveyed 1030 7th-grade students (478 girls, Mage = 12.56 ± 0.33 years) from 26 classes in one junior high school in a moderate-size inland China city. Participants completed questionnaires on 8 living environmental indicators and 6 self-identity indicators. Results showed that four environment profiles were identified: High Family/High School Living Environment (HF/HS LE) (n = 384), Moderate Family/Moderate School Living Environment (MF/MS LE) (n = 377), Moderate Family/Low School Living Environment (MF/LS LE) (n = 151), and Low Family/Low School Living Environment (LF/LS LE) (n = 118). Students in HF/HS LE reported the highest scores and students in LF/LS LE reported the lowest scores on commitment and in-depth exploration in both educational and relational domains. The present study highlighted the important compensatory impacts of school environment on students with disadvantageous family environment. Limitations and implications were discussed.

Following the 6th Conference of the International Society for Child Indicators (Montreal, 2017), this Special Issue was compiled to advance an interdisciplinary understanding of the complexity of conceptualizations, determinants, consequences, and measurement of child neglect around the world and to highlight the need for reforms in child protection systems. The most common type of child maltreatment with long term damaging consequences for children, families, and societies child neglect continues to receive limited scientific and public attention, particularly in resource low settings and in the field of child indicators. Lack of clarity in definition and measures, weak multi-sectoral coordination, and unclear accountability lines, are among the factors that contribute to the insufficient attention to neglect in research and action. Adopting an eco-systemic perspective of child neglect allows us to incorporate the perspectives of families and to question the role and responsibility of the State and the broader conditions within which parents operate. Sound statistical and qualitative indicators of child wellbeing in cases of neglect are urgently needed across geographic areas and over time. Combining child-centredness and attention to socio-economic, cultural, and political context issues will be important in advancing the field.

Children’s development in the early years has been shown to be related to their success in later life in a range of areas including education, employment and crime. Determining why some children do better than others in the early years is a key issue for policy and is crucial in attempts to reduce inequalities. This research examines differences in early child development by examining the factors associated with the cognitive ability of children up to age 5 using cognitive assessments administered as part of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) and teacher reports of child ability. The results show that younger children, those with low birth weight, lower parental education, lower income and living in social housing are more likely to have lower achievement, on average, and a higher probability of being at the bottom of the distribution of cognitive scores at age 5.

Children’s self-esteem/self-concept, a core psychological construct, has been measured in an overwhelming number of studies, and the widespread use of such measures should indicate they have well-established content validity, internal consistency and factor structures. This study, sampling a demographically representative cohort in late childhood/early adolescence in Dublin, Ireland (total n = 651), examined three major self-esteem/self-concept scales designed for late childhood/early adolescence: Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale for Children 2 (Piers et al. 2002), Self-Description Questionnaire I (Marsh 1992) and Self-Perception Profile for Children (Harter 1985). It also examined findings in light of the salient self factors identified by participants in a linked mixed-methods study. The factor structure of Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale was not replicated. The Self-Description Questionnaire I and Self-Perception Profile for Children were replicated only in part although in similar ways. In all three scales, a global/ appearance self evaluation factor accounted for the largest variance in factor analyses. Sport/athletic ability, school ability, school enjoyment, maths and reading ability/enjoyment, behaviour, peer popularity, and parent factors were also identified but did not always reflect existing scale structures. Notably, the factors extracted, or items present in these scales, often did not reflect young people’s priorities, such as friendship over popularity, the importance of family and extended family members, and the significance of incremental personal mastery in activities rather than assessing oneself as comparatively good at preferred activities. The findings raise questions about how self-esteem/self-concept scales are used and interpreted in research with children and young people.